


you should know me better than that

by fictionalcandie



Series: superhero soul mates [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Background Relationships, Grief/Mourning, Implied Relationships, M/M, Pining For Your Dead Best Friend, Soul Bond, Soulmate Issues, Telepathic Bond, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-18 16:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11293989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: Seems like everybody's got a soul mate these days. Some people are happier about it than others.If only that were all they had to worry about.





	1. don't make me read your mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been staring at this all weekend, and I'm tired of looking at it, so here. Have the first chapter of the fic where I really start having fun with this 'verse. Work and chapter titles are all from _I Should Live in Salt_ by The National.

Whoever’s on the other end of Steve’s soul bond has the busiest goddamn brain of anybody that Steve has ever heard. It never stops _going_.

This new century is busy, too— _everyone_ always going, always in a hurry, and so much _noise_ everywhere—but the impressions coming across the bond are on another level entirely. A low, constant buzz of feeling; the indistinct shape of thoughts.

It reminds Steve of that once that he got ahold of the coffee grounds from the dumpster behind the diner on the corner, and because he was only eight thought they’d give him energy so he could run as long as the other kids without having to stop and gasp and panic his way through an asthma attack. He didn’t know you weren’t supposed to _eat_ them, and certainly not two pots’ worth. Steve wound up with limbs he couldn’t keep still and a heart that felt like it was going to race right out of his chest, or give out entirely. He’d still been short of breath, though; maybe worse than he normally was while sitting still.

His soul bond feels all the time like his body felt that day. It’s _exhausting_ —doesn’t even seem to slow down very long at night. Steve knows, because he hasn’t managed to sleep more than an hour at once since he woke up. It’s at least half because of all that noise coming from his soul bond.

He’s lying in bed, trying to sleep, and the bond’s a busy hum in the back of his mind. He’s cold, and tired, and he spent all day wandering around SHIELD trying to find something he should be doing, only to get gawked at for his troubles wherever he went.

He’s _tired_.

“Shut y’r _damn trap_ already,” Steve groans out loud, to his empty quarters, this place SHIELD set up for him that’s supposed to make him feel comfortable. It echoes, hollow, and too much like that lifetime ago, back sharing an apartment with Bucky. Only there’s no Bucky waiting a few feet and one bed away, snickering because he’d only been talking in the first place because otherwise _Steve_ wouldn’t shut up.

There’s no Bucky anywhere now. Bucky is _dead_.

All Steve’s got is this beehive buzzing in the back of his mind, a connection that’s all sour needles. He tried putting a pillow over his head the first night, but of course that didn’t work. It’s not a noise getting in through his _ears_. It’s a feeling coming from _inside_ Steve. He can’t just put a few layers of feathers between them to escape it, can’t muffle the damn—Oh.

Maybe, if they’re feathers _inside_?

It’s possible to block the feeling of a bond mate, but they always talked about it in school like it was something to be used on physical pain, to stop what one mate was feeling from incapacitating the other.

Soul mates aren’t supposed to try to hide from each other because they’re _loud_ and the _wrong person_. Steve’s notoriously bad at doing what he’s _supposed_ to, though, just ask anyone who knows him. Except nobody can, because as far as he can tell they’re all _dead_ , aren’t they.

He turns his stubborn focus inward, imagines the bond like a stream trickling into a lake that is his mind. He imagines building a dam across the whole side of the lake. Then, for good measure, he carries it all the way around the shores of the lake, a wall twice as high as the stream was wide. He wills the whole thing to just _stop_.

Like the answer to a prayer, it does. If he pays very careful attention, he can still sense the stream outside the wall, running along it, a chilling tingle, but right now there’s nothing getting through it. Not unless he focuses on listening for it, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to do that.

There’s silence in Steve’s head again.

It’s not actually any better, but at least Steve is sort of used to it. This way, he might be able to _sleep_.

#

Tony’s soul mate is apparently not too big a fan of soul bonds.

At least, that’s what Tony concludes when suddenly, halfway through the third night feeling the bond, it switches off, like a television turned way down low, one tiny percentage above mute.

Now, Tony’s not saying he’s an expert, or anything, but he feels confident in saying that when your soul bond comes in, you’re _supposed_ to want to figure out everything you can about them, and then meet them, in as short an order as you can manage. Especially, he’s pretty sure, if your soul mate is one of the richest and most famous people in the world.

Trust Tony to somehow wind up with the one person who’s _not_ interesting in it, for his soul mate.

Although, in fairness to his soul mate, they probably didn’t actually realize who he is; they hadn’t managed words, before whoever it was started up with their hermit impression. And Tony’s pretty sure that when eighteen-year-olds get their soul bonds in, their first thought usually _isn’t_ that the person on the other end of it’s an internationally infamous _forty-three-year-old_ bondless billionaire. So it’s not like they know what they’re trying to turn their back on.

They’d probably still do it, though, even if they did. All his money and his brains aside, Tony’s done a lot of things for a teenage soul mate to disdain. In every sense, but especially romantically; especially in the eyes of a _teenage_ soul mate.

People usually wait, for their soul mate. Oh, sure, sometimes their soul mate dies, or isn’t someone they can physically _want_ , or grew up into someone they don’t like, or else the bond just… doesn’t come in. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it never happens. Waiting is the traditional thing, though; it’s just what people _do_. You wait, and if when you met them romance isn’t in the cards, _then_ you start looking outside the bond.

There comes a point, however, when sometimes a person is willing to stop waiting. The aftermath of Tony’s was pretty public.

See, Tony had reached that point about thirty minutes into his first legal bottle of whiskey—or rather, the first one he drank all the way through in one sitting. He’d figured, whoever the hell his soul mate was—this was back before he’d accepted that he didn’t have one—whoever they were, if they couldn’t be bothered to show up to help him deal with the death of his parents, then he didn’t give a damn what they wanted. Or what they might think about him sleeping around.

That was good for Tony, is the thing. That worked for him, worked really well, for a long, long time. It worked until he got used to the idea that there was nobody on whom he was even waiting, that he didn’t have _any_ body, and then he really just did _whatever_ the hell he wanted to. And _that_ worked even _better_.

The problem is that Tony apparently _does_ have a soul mate, and it’s not working any more.

It turns out that Tony, the profligate flirt and occasionally recovering alcoholic, has been subconsciously punishing a soul mate he didn’t believe in for the crime of—what? Failing to be _born_ early enough? How could anybody hold it against an eighteen-year-old that they weren’t _alive_ yet twenty years ago? That’s, like, the dictionary definition of _not their fault_ , but Tony had done it, anyway.

Tony has always known he was an asshole, knew it almost as soon as he learned the word, but apparently he’s even more of an asshole than he’s always thought. He’s, like, the world champion asshole. Of course he’d wind up with a soul mate who’d nope out of things, at least as far as anybody _can_ nope out of a soul bond, at the first opportunity. It’s the least of what karma owes him.

On the bright side, no teenage soul mate hunting him down right now means, hey, no teenage soul mate taking over Tony’s life and painting him a giant creepster in the media, so. That’s got to be worth something, right? A point or two in favor of being ignored, certainly.

Not like Tony doesn’t have practice at it. Stark luck, everybody.

Tony pours himself a scotch.

#

“Wait, are you _drunk_?”

Honestly, it’s been four minutes, Tony’s kind of surprised it took Rhodey this long into the call to work that out. He takes a congratulatory pull off the scotch bottle, to reward himself for hiding it so well.

“Course I’m drunk, Rhodey,” he answers. “What do you take me for?”

“An idiot. Tony, it’s five-thirty in the morning,” Rhodey complains.

Is it? Huh. Tony squints at the clock.

Hah, he knew Rhodey was wrong.

“In Malibu, maybe,” he says, with relish. “ _I’m_ in New York.”

“You’re— _Tony_.”

“Yes, that’s me. Is your memory starting to go, old man? Does your soul mate know about these memory issues?”

“Tony, it’s eight-thirty in the morning, and you’re drunk.”

“Well, I guess your memory’s all right, for now,” Tony allows. “That’ll save me a few billion in medical research, anyway.”

“You called me at _work_ , Tony,” Rhodey snaps. He takes a few deep breaths. “What’s going on?”

Tony’s too drunk not to answer that, way too drunk not to _want_ to answer it honestly. “My soul mate put us on mute.”

Rhodey is quiet for a long time. Tony drinks some more scotch.

“I'm sorry, Tony, I think it’s my hearing you have to worry about. I could’ve sworn you just mentioned a soul mate,” Rhodey says at last.

“Nope. Your hearing’s fine,” says Tony.

“Tony,” Rhodey gasps. There’s amazement there, and disbelief, and joy. A little bit of accusation, too, maybe. “That’s—my god.”

“Uh huh.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know. I just _said_ they put the bond on mute,” Tony says, annoyed now. He glares at the scotch bottle. “Your flyboy ever do that to you?”

Rhodey hesitates.

Tony straightens. Or, okay, lurches more upright, anyway, it’s hard to be very straight with most of a bottle of scotch in his system. “Wait, Flyboy _has_?” he blurts.

“A few times,” Rhodey says, kind of guarded. “We both have. For combat situations.”

Tony deflates. “Oh.”

“Tony…” Right, Rhodey is being way too sympathetic. Tony can’t stand it.

“You know many eighteen-year-olds getting put in combat situations, Rhodes?” he asks, darkly, to get Rhodey to stop sounding like that.

There’s a sharp inhale, then silence for a while.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Rhodey says. Now he sounds sad, and pitying, and it’s worse. Tony wants the sympathy back. That was warmer. He liked it better. He takes an angry drink.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, “so’m I.”

Rhodey sighs over the line, big and gusty. “Look. I have to get back to work. Put the bottle down and go to bed, Tony.”

Tony considers. Probably Uncle Sam and the US Air Force _do_ expect Rhodey to do at least a _little_ bit to earn his paycheck, even outside the armor. He should let Rhodey get back to it—which means at least letting Rhodey _think_ Tony’s listening to him.

Eh, the bottle’s empty, anyway.

“Yeah, sure,” he tells Rhodey. “Go keep America safe.”

“Go sleep, Tony,” Rhodey insists.

Tony expects that to be the end of it. But the call doesn't disconnect, there’s just a long pause. Tony waits it out, curious. Did Rhodey forget that he’s supposed to be the one who hangs up?

“And, Tony?” comes Rhodey’s voice, after almost a minute.

Tony’s ears perk up, a little. Rhodey sounds like he’s fighting himself on something. “Yeah, buddy?”

“Congratulations, on the soul mate,” Rhodey says. The uncertainty is gone; he sounds as sure of himself as you’d expect of an Air Force colonel. “It’s a good thing, man.”

Tony doesn’t think that he agrees, but either way, it’s sorta touching that his oldest friend—who’s known him since before either of them had soul bonds, who hoards information about his own soul mate like it’s a state fucking secret—is making a point to say it.

Tony’s feeling lighter, suddenly, than he has since the bond went quiet.

“Thanks, Rhodey,” he says. And, feeling generous, lies, “I’m sure you’re right.”

Rhodey snorts. “That’d be a first,” he mutters. “ _Sleep_.”

The line finally does disconnect.

Tony does as he’s told. Mostly because he doesn’t really feel like getting up off the couch to grab another bottle, and he hasn’t given JARVIS arms of his own, yet, so there’s nobody to get it for him.

#

Steve does manage to sleep. At first.

He wishes he hadn’t, after the third time he wakes up convinced he’s still falling—dropping off the side of a train; crashing a plane into the ice; even, somehow, both at once—and shivering so hard his teeth rattle.

There’s no peace to be found in sleeping.

It doesn’t mean Steve takes down his mental walls. Just because he’s figured out he can’t sleep doesn’t mean he wants to take the lid back off that can of worms.

He may have put up a wall, but he can still tell that his soul mate is there, still knows he’s got a soul bond. Steve had wanted one, once, but that was almost eighty years and a lifetime ago. That was when he had _Bucky_. He never asked for a soul bond, not to somebody who isn’t Bucky.

He doesn’t want one now.

Without the bond constantly distracting him, Steve finds that this new century isn’t quite so different as it had seemed. There’s still people everywhere, and the world is full of noise, but he finds he can slot it all in as just another kind of background noise, like the rumble of car engines or boats from down near the docks, or train whistles and his neighbors’ voices through thin apartment walls.

Anyway, the coffee they serve nowadays is a hell of a lot better.

Bucky would have liked it.

#

Tony is distracting himself—brooding is not an attractive quality, so as much fun as it is he’s trying to stop, thanks—by cracking SHIELD’s servers. At least the ones he can get to without a direct line.

Hmm… a direct line. Tony’ll have to find an opportunity for that.

What? If they didn’t want Tony looking at them, they should have made the things harder to get into. And less interesting!

He really is doing it to distract himself, not for any other reason, but then he finds something that makes him glad he’s breaking all these privacy laws.

Because SHIELD recovered Captain America’s plane.

More miraculous than that, somehow Steve Rogers was actually alive amid the wreckage. Alive, and not apparently suffering crippling injury, hypothermic loss of extremities, or catastrophic brain damage. He’s walking around, fit as any dozen fiddles, looking like the picture of all Tony’s childhood hero worshiping.

Quite literally; there’d been original WWII propaganda posters on his bedroom walls. (Thank you, Aunt Peggy.) His favorite Howling Commandos vanity shot had hung over his bed all through college. He’d even kept one on a wall in his workshop up until the whole—Afghanistan, hostage-taken, _Iron Man_ thing.

Then he’d put one back, after Dad saved his life from beyond the grave, because why the hell not. Also because Dad’s fanboy stash had contained a Howling Commandos poster that had been _painted by Captain America himself_. It would have been a crime to leave that in storage, where nobody’s eyeballs would get to feast on it.

The point is, Captain Rogers’s face has loomed over the most important parts of Tony’s life practically as long as he can remember. He might know that face even better than he knows his own, which is saying something. He’s Tony Stark, he’s _Iron Man_ , and that’s—That’s _Captain America_.

And now he’s _here_. Well, in a secure suite at SHIELD’s highly classified satellite base in New York City. That's practically here.

Say again, Captain America is _back_.

Holy _shit_.

Forget getting a soul bond at forty-three, this is way more exciting. It’s possibly the coolest thing to happen all century, and it’s only 2012.

Dad would be absolutely losing his _shit_ , if he were here.

Which, come to think. Has anyone told Aunt Peggy about this? She’d _love_ it, Tony doesn’t care how far gone her dementia has her—he refuses to believe there wouldn’t still be a part of her who’d recognize Captain Rogers as the man for whom her and Dad’s eyes got all star-spangled.

“JARVIS,” Tony says, rubbing his hands together. “Get me the suit. We’re going to do Aunt Peggy a little favor. And SHIELD and Captain America, and _everybody_. We’re doing all the favors today.”

“Right away, sir,” JARVIS says.

#

Steve’s in his room, a week after they defrosted him, pouring himself a cup of coffee, out of the tiny little machine they gave him that makes coffee at the touch of a button. He’s grateful for this machine, right now, because an hour ago his soul bond lit up like a christmas tree and started banging away like an entire brass section, even through his walls, and he’s hoping the caffeine will help with the resulting headache.

The door bursts open, and a man waltzes through.

Waltzes through, into his _secure quarters at SHIELD_ , being trailed by Agent Coulson. There’s a wrinkle at the corner of the agent’s mouth that would be a frown on an ordinary man, and it’s directed squarely at the back of the unknown man’s head, but he doesn’t have his gun out, and is making no move to draw it. The man who’s invading Steve’s privacy looks a lot like Howard Stark, though he’s at once older than Steve ever saw Howard, and younger than Steve knows Howard would be by now.

Howard’s probably dead, actually. More definitely than any of the others, really; if Howard had still been alive, Steve’s certain Howard would have heard about _him_ being alive by now, and Howard certainly loved to stick his nose in enough that he’d have been here with bells on. Probably he’d be poking a wrinkly finger at Steve’s face, trying to check whether he really hadn’t aged.

Howard hasn’t been by and Steve’s face remains unpoked, ergo, Howard is probably dead.

Steve could have checked by now, if he’d really wanted. Back the day after he’d woken up, the first thing Agent Coulson had done, besides introduce himself, was give Steve files on all his friends from before his time in the ice. There had been one on Howard, Steve’s pretty sure. He should have read those files; he’s had time. It’s been days.

The one about Bucky’s surviving family had been on the top. Steve put the whole stack down as soon as he saw Bucky’s enlistment photo staring up off the page at him.

He hasn’t touched them since.

The man who looks like Howard doesn’t seem to have noticed the blank stare Steve has accidentally been giving him. He’s talking much too quickly and loudly about at least three different things, none of which interest Steve. At least, he doesn’t think they do—it’s hard to tell, at that speed.

Just listening to it for two minutes, especially so soon after figuring out how to block out the busy whirl of thoughts from his soul bond, makes Steve feel weighed down with iron. He wants to crawl back into his bed and pull the covers over his head.

Not the generic cot here in the secure quarters, oh no—not any bed that still exists, but the narrow, thin mattress that he slept on in the apartment he and Bucky shared, that last couple of years before the war. Maybe it would be enough to let him feel warm again; after all, that had been the warmest place Steve can ever remember being. The little bed, still too big for him, had had twice as many blankets on it as Bucky’s matching bed, on the other side of the room, because Bucky is the biggest mother hen Steve ever met, though he mostly don’t use words to show it. Dumping half his own covers on Steve’s when Steve isn’t looking, and pretending he hasn’t done nothing, that’s the sort of thing he likes to do.

 _Was_ a mother hen; was the sort of thing he liked to do. Everything about Bucky is past tense, just like almost everything of Steve’s. Bucky’s dead now.

Clutching his coffee cup too hard in both hands, Steve sinks heavily into a chair. He looks up with a tired gaze at Agent Coulson and this strange man who looks so much like Howard, and waits to see what they want.

#

“Oh my god,” Tony breathes, cutting off his spiel on security protocols and the pointlessness thereof when one’s firewalls are thin _and_ one’s guards are easily impressed by the shark smiles of visiting billionaires. He watches as big, blond, and beautiful—this is him, this _must_ be him—sinks into a chair with his cup of coffee. It’s shitty coffee, Tony can smell it from here; surely they should have given Captain America the good stuff. “You really are real.”

Agent Agent’s mouth pinches, just slightly, and his shoulders move like he’s holding in a sigh but only barely. He says, to Big Blond and Beautiful with _way_ more respect than he’s ever directed at Tony, “Captain Rogers, this is Tony Stark.”

The long-suffering tone reminds Tony of Jarvis—the butler, not the AI—and he makes a mental note to save that thought for sometime when it’ll _really_ rile Agent Agent to hear it.

Right at this moment, Captain Steve Rogers is eyeing Tony sidelong, through a tiny bit of a squint, and the fact that he’s being given the once-over by Captain America takes precedence over, well. Just about everything. Even his teenage soul mate crisis is going on the back burner for this, because it’s _Captain America_.

“Captain,” Tony says, and maybe he should have tried to sound like the rational adult the uninformed always expect out of the owner and former CEO of _the_ Fortune 500 company, but really, he’s not feeling very much like a grownup just now. It comes out with the gleeful edge of a six-year-old discovering there are donuts to go with his fruit loops and cartoons on Saturday morning, instead.

That heroic golden brow furrows as Captain Rogers struggles not to show a confused frown. “Mr. Stark,” he replies, and it’s almost a question.

A tiny fraction of Tony’s over-excited brain supplies a possible explanation for that squint when Agent Agent introduced them.

“Howard was my dad,” Tony explains, feeling helpful. “I’ve been told there’s a resemblance.” Hopefully that will clear things up for the good captain, and he’ll stop with the frown.

It sort of works.

“Howard _is_ gone, then,” Captain Rogers mutters, mostly to himself it sounds like. Then he blinks once, twice, and hey, he’s giving Tony the once-over again. It looks a little more mission-critical, this time. “Howard had a kid? He got _married_?”

“Well, not in that order, Mom never would have stood for it,” Tony shoots back. Not even mentioning his parents can ruin this high.

“That was included in the profiles I left with you, Captain,” Agent Agent cuts in.

Annoyed, Tony flashes Agent Agent the soppiest look of affection he can muster. It’s pretty goopy. “Aw, you told him about me?”

“I told him about your father, Stark,” Agent Agent retorts.

“Talking about the Father Stark inevitably ends in talking about the Son Stark, and my inherent superior awesomeness,” Tony tells him, very forgivingly, and beams when Agent Agent’s eyes twitch like they want to roll.

Over at the table, Captain Rogers’s impressive shoulders have stiffened up a little.

Tony didn’t realize shoulders _came_ that broad; he’d been sure all those propaganda posters must’ve been exaggerating for effect, but apparently not. Clearly, he hasn’t been giving Project Rebirth enough credit. Dad did some _good_ work, here.

“I haven’t finished reading them,” Captain Rogers says, not looking at Agent Agent. His voice is as stiff as his shoulders. Huh. Something in them he must not have liked, then. Trust SHIELD not to lead with the good stuff.

Well, maybe Tony can help with that.

“Have they told you about Director Carter yet,” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Who?” Captain Rogers asks, frowning outright now.

Guess that answers that question. Double huh. Tony raises his eyebrows, shoots Agent Agent a sidelong look he pretends not to see. “Director Carter. You know, your pal? Peggy?”

Captain Rogers’s shoulders stiffen even more. Christ, is he expecting bad news here, too? “What about Peggy?”

“Well, that she’s _alive_ ,” Tony says, because obviously. What did Captain Rogers think he meant, the way she liked to take her tea?

Cream, one sugar.

Right, not the moment for that. Not with the wide-open, wounded look Captain Rogers is now giving him with those hollow blue eyes.

“ _Peggy’s_ alive?” Captain Rogers breathes. His hands have gone white-knuckled on his coffee cup.

“Yep,” Tony answers, pleased with himself. He knew that would help. “She’s in a home upstate, but she’s doing great, except for the—”

“Stark,” Agent Agent snaps.

“What?” Tony shoots Agent Agent a much harder look than his last one. “She’s my godmother, I think I’m entitled to tell Captain America where to find her.” He pauses, smiles a little meanly, and raises his eyebrows all over again. “She has a right to see him, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” Captain Rogers says, quietly.

Tony spares him a glance. Man looks like a kicked puppy. Seriously, somebody should have done this sooner.

“What are you waiting for?” he asks. “Her to come visit _you_? She’s ninety-three years old, buddy, I think this one’s on you.”

Captain Rogers’s lips flatten into a thin, pale line.

Well, at least he doesn’t look like any kind of puppy, anymore. Unless maybe a Rottweiler puppy. A _pissed-off_ Rottweiler puppy.

It’s… a pretty good look for him.

 _Huh_.

How ‘bout that.

#

Howard’s son is a _jerk_.

Oh, Howard was kind of a jerk, too. Conceited in the way that very smart or very rich or very good-looking people sometimes seemed to be. Only with Howard, it was for every one of those at the same time—and yet, for all that, it was like he was constantly trying to prove himself, as if there was some plateau of success he was still trying to reach, and once he’d reached it he’d finally be able to let himself relax.

He’d been charming too; had something about him that made it hard to stay annoyed with him.

Steve can’t imagine that Howard’s son possesses the same mitigating factor. This Tony Stark seems utterly sure of himself, and self-righteous and totally tactless, and Steve isn’t having _any_ trouble staying annoyed.

“Are you sure she’d want to see me?” he bites out.

Stark’s eyes boggle at him. “Want to see—Buddy, the only person she’d want to see _more_ is her husband, and he’s _actually_ dead.” Stark waves a wild hand at Steve. “Which you don’t _look_ like you are.”

Steve flexes his fingers around his cup. He could probably hit Stark square in the forehead with it, but he doesn’t want to waste the coffee.

“ _Stark_ ,” Agent Coulson says again, an even sharper warning edge to his tone.

“What?” Stark says, turning to Agent Coulson and waving his hand yet more wildly at Steve. “Does he look dead to _you_?”

Agent Coulson’s gaze darts, for just a second, to Steve, then he goes back to not-frowning at Stark. “Captain Rogers is in perfect health.”

Steve barely refrains from snorting. He doesn’t refrain from rolling his eyes; neither of them seem to notice.

“Then he can go see Aunt Peggy,” Stark announces, like it’s the logical progression from Steve being _healthy_.

When Agent Coulson doesn’t answer quickly enough, and Steve doesn’t even try to answer at all, Stark holds up one of those tiny things that pass as telephones nowadays. He waves it at Agent Coulson like an invitation, and adds, “I can call her kids and ask, you know. If it’s _permission_ he’s waiting on.” He pauses a fraction of a second to look smug. “Pretty sure Edie and Junior will say ‘yes’.”

“Peggy had kids?” Steve blurts, without meaning to say anything at all.

Stark’s attention snaps back to Steve. His teeth look very white in his dark goatee, when he smiles like that. “Oh, yeah, you bet she did. Girl and a boy,” he says. He waggles the telephone, for some reason. “Grandkids, even. You want pics to prove it?”

Steve feels very young, suddenly, and yet impossibly old, too. “She found her soul mate, then?” he hears himself asking, through a weird rushing in his ears.

“Found him, married him, saved the country a couple times with him. The whole nine yards.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and his voice still sounds strange. Too flat, too even. “Good.”

Stark goes on talking. “Dad found his, too, if that was gonna be your next question,” he says, tone too jaunty. He’s bouncing on his feet again, like he can’t hold still. “Only had to wait twenty years for her.”

Steve actually flinches, at that.

Howard got a bond as well, then. Like Steve. Maybe everybody really does get one, if they wait long enough.

Bucky didn’t.

He never got the chance.

Steve got him killed too early for that. For a lot of things.

“He thought he was bondless, just like you, Cap,” says Stark, poking just like his father would’ve, but with a metaphorical finger into an open, festering wound, instead of flesh and bone at Steve’s face. “Everybody did. Surprised ‘em all. Aunt Peggy always says you should’ve seen his face, when Mom walked up to him on the street that first time.”

Stark pauses, rubs his hands together; they’re empty now. Steve doesn’t know where the telephone went. Stark must have put it away at some point.

He looks gleeful again, like he did when he first walked in. A kid in a candy store. “She slapped him, you know. That’s how they solidified. It was on the front page of half the newspapers in the country.”

“Is this necessary?” Agent Coulson asks, tone and posture telegraphing loud and clear that he doesn’t think it is.

“Are you kidding, Agent? This stuff is gold. Everybody loves this story, you gotta tell it to him,” Stark says. He jerks a thumb, this time, to indicate Steve. “Look at the sad lump, you didn’t even give him a TV. He needs the entertainment.” 

Steve doesn’t need the entertainment. He needs Bucky, needs to go home, needs what he _can’t have_. What doesn’t exist anymore.

He can’t do this. Not right now, maybe not ever. He just—he just _can’t_.

He closes his eyes. “Get out.”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” whines Stark. “Really? You’re gonna be like that?”

“Get _out_ ,” Steve says again, through his teeth, this time. His hands are so tight on the coffee cup that they ache. “Please.”

“The door, Mr. Stark,” Agent Coulson says, voice very cold.

After a beat, Steve hears Stark spin on his heel. “Yeah, fine,” he says, over his shoulder, even as his footsteps head for the door, “I’m going, I’m gone.”

Coulson’s footsteps follow him out without another word. The door clicks closed behind them.

Steve slowly and carefully pushes his coffee cup to the other side of the little table, instead of throwing it at the closed door. He props his elbows on the table edge, and drops his face into his hands. Nobody else comes in to bother him, and even the bond has gone chilly quiet through Steve’s walls, almost accusing.

Steve doesn’t move for a long time.

#

So, nobody ever bothered to tell Tony that Captain America was an _ass_.

It’s disappointing, is what it is. Agent Agent is glaring at Tony, like this is somehow Tony’s fault.

Don’t get Tony wrong, one of his greatest talents is bringing out the less than polite qualities in those around him—he’s an asshattery magnet—but he’s done nothing to deserve it this time. Captain America just has no sense of humor.

Maybe they forgot to defrost that when they were warming up the rest of him.

“So, what, did Blondie leave his funny bone in the ice, or what?” Tony asks.

Agent Agent keeps glaring. It’s barely a glare—it’s barely a _facial expression_. On anybody else, Tony’d think they’d just had a bad burrito for lunch. On Agent Agent, it is obviously a glare.

“I can kill you with a spoon,” Agent Agent says, his bland voice as pleasant as ever. “A rusty spoon.”

Tony stares at him. Then Tony squints at him. Agent Agent’s face doesn’t change, and he doesn’t deliver the punchline for whatever joke that was supposed to be.

“I would assume you’re joking, only I don’t think you're programmed for that,” Tony tells him, mournfully. “Be honest, do you have a cousin who’s really the Sheriff of Nottingham?”

“Good bye, Mr. Stark. Please don’t come back.”

Oh, Tony doesn’t intend to—he’s had more than enough Captain America to see him through a good long while, thanks.

#

“How are you doing today?”

Dr. Michaels is giving Steve an intent look as she asks it, the way she does whenever she asks him questions. They're always simple, her questions, but not easy to answer. She has this way of finding and asking the hardest questions and making them _seem_ simple, when they shouldn’t.

Agent Coulson had called her a doctor; a counselor. Steve had heard another agent in the waiting room, while talking into their telephone, call her a _shrink_.

Steve isn’t sure why they sent him to her, but the first time had been the day after he woke up, right after they gave him those files, when he’d still felt so whiplashed by everything happening to him that he’d gone along because at the time he hadn’t seen anything better to do. He’s seen her four times now, and so far it hasn’t hurt him any. Not any more than anything else since he woke up.

“Steve?” Dr. Micheals prompts, her voice gentle.

He’s been quiet too long, trying to think of an honest answer he can bear to give. Agent Coulson—and Dr. Michaels, herself—had made it very clear that honesty was important.

“Fine,” he settles on, same as he always ends up doing, after another moment thinking about it. Surely, it counts as honesty if he _means_ it to be, right? “I’m fine.”

Dr. Michaels sighs, very slightly. “Really, Steve? Again? Are you, _really_?”

“Of course,” Steve says, immediately.

She gives him a steady stare. Steve carefully doesn’t squirm, just looks steadily back. She looks away from him, down at her notepad, and her mouth purses.

“A different tactic, then,” he thinks he hears her mutter. She puts down her pen.

“Doctor?” Steve ventures.

She looks back up, meets Steve’s eyes.

“You know, Steve, if you really are fine, it would be wonderful,” she says, in a more conversational tone than her gentle probing questions. She raises one eyebrow. “It would also be _miraculous_.”

“Uh.” Steve presses his lips together hard so he doesn’t frown. There are a lot of things about him lately that he’s pretty sure count as miraculous. Coming back from the dead; a soul bond, after what amounts to more than eighty years without. Somehow, he doesn’t think she’s talking about either of those. “Sorry?”

“Because, see, you were in crude cryofreeze for seventy years,” Dr. Michaels goes on, in the same tone. “Because you deliberately crashed a plane into the Arctic.”

So maybe she was talking about that.

“Almost everyone you cared about is now dead or in a nursing home, in what must seem the blink of an eye to you,” she says, and Steve has to look away as she keeps talking. “And the place you came from was, quite literally, the middle of World War Two.”

“Yes,” he forces out, through a jaw that feels made of stone, “I’d noticed.”

“So, you see, when you tell me that you’re fine, like you do every time you come in here, even though I want to believe you, believe in that miracle, I know that you must be lying.”

Steve grinds his teeth. He doesn’t make a sound.

“Nobody could be fine, not after all of that,” she adds, with infuriating gentleness.

Steve takes a deep breath. He holds it for several heartbeats, then lets it out slowly. He does it again a couple more times. He drags his gaze back to her. Dr. Michaels is watching him steadily again.

“Would you like to try once more to answer my question?” she offers.

Steve stares at her helplessly.

How else is he _supposed_ to answer? He doesn’t know how he’s doing today. Mostly, since he woke up from the ice, he feels like he doesn’t know anything. Except the stuff he’d rather forget.

Bucky’s dead, and Steve misses him like a lost limb, like his hands have been cut off. Like someone’s scooped out all his insides and left him walking around hollow. Steve can’t talk about Bucky. Not to anybody, but especially not somebody who never even _knew_ Bucky. Which means he can’t talk about anything he’s feeling that’s even a little related to Bucky; that’d just end with her asking questions about Bucky, anyway.

He can’t bring up anything about the soul bond, either. It’d turn out the same way, and, well. Steve isn’t ready to admit to anybody that he’s got one, now. He’s got a bond, and it wasn’t to Bucky—that still hurts too much.

What is there left to talk about? His time spent wandering around SHIELD, without a purpose? No, thank you. The _weather_? Again, no. The visit yesterday from Howard’s son, Tony?

Steve pauses, actually considering that one. It might be safe, but—but he’d been a jerk to Tony Stark, because he’d made Steve think of things he didn’t want to, things like Bucky. And Bucky’s already off limits.

Steve shivers.

He pauses again.

Maybe he can talk about _that_.

“Sometimes I feel cold,” he hears himself saying, “like I’m still in the ice.”

Dr. Michaels looks startled, then almost relieved. She must not have expected him to answer at all. Steve ought to feel guilty about that. He doesn’t, really; he’s got worse things to feel guilty about.

“Well,” she’s saying. “That’s understandable.”

Steve frowns. “Is it?”

“Of course. It’s a normal reaction, your brain trying to cope with what you experienced.”

“You’re saying it’s all in my head.”

“Well, yes, in a way, you could look at it like that.” At whatever look must be on his face, she hurries to add, “But that doesn’t mean it’s not real!”

Steve keeps frowning.

“On the bright said, it will probably mostly go away as you heal,” she says. She gives him an earnest look. “As you accept what happened.”

“I guess,” Steve says. He doesn’t think he buys it; the ice that comes back sometimes doesn’t feel like something that’s going to go away. Not any time soon.

“And,” she adds, voice too bright, “you’ve got the most remarkable healing rate of anyone our doctors have ever seen. You’ll be just fine before you know it, you’ll see.”

“Sure,” Steve replies, woodenly—this, he knows he doesn’t buy.

There are some things that don’t ever heal. Some wounds you don’t come back from.

 _Bucky_.

Oh, God.

Dr. Michaels keeps trying to get him to open up again, during the rest of the hour, but Steve shuts it out. He gives her short, polite answers that don’t mean anything. Leaves as soon as he can.

He goes to the gym, after, because he can’t stand the thought of crying alone in his room again just yet. He sits and stares at the punching bags for a while. He’d start in on one—maybe if he punches something until he’s numb all over, it’d help—but he can’t seem to make himself move for it.

Hollowed out, nothing left on the inside but a soul bond he’s too much of a selfish coward to face, and nothing but ice at all his edges.

#

Tony’s still stewing over Captain America when Pepper comes to find him in the lab, two days later. It’s a nice change from stewing over his soul mate. More productive, too; Tony’s almost finished with the redesign for the Mark 7.

“Tony,” she says, JARVIS obligingly turning down Tony’s music as she steps through the doors. Tony looks over, in time to catch the way she pauses in the act of taking off her suit jacket—she always takes it off when she steps into the lab, everybody does—and looks around the lab. She eases the jacket back up her arm and over her shoulder, a wrinkle between her brows. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Tony says, turning back to his work bench. “I’m working.”

“That was your ‘angry tinkering’ soundtrack,” Pepper accuses. She comes close enough Tony can see her in his peripherals without taking his attention off the armor.

“What, no, it wasn’t. I don’t have one of those.”

“Tony.”

He huffs. “ _Pepper_ ,” he mocks back.

“Is this because we haven’t found your soul mate?”

Tony tenses, grip going too tight on the soldering iron before he consciously makes himself let go, picks up a wrench instead. Pepper sighs while he’s still trying to decide how to answer. “I know you haven’t gotten anything concrete from them yet, but if you’d let me and Happy—”

“Not having found my soul mate isn’t annoying me,” Tony tells Pepper.

This stupid t-shirt clinging to him, though, that _is_ annoying him. With a grunt, Tony puts down the wrench and strips off the shirt. He tosses it across the room, grabs the wrench again.

“My soul mate shut up days ago,” he says, getting back to work. “No, it’s _Captain America_ annoying me.”

Pepper glances, probably involuntarily, toward the shattered poster frame sitting in the corner, the damp crumpled t-shirt on the floor in front of it. “Captain America.”

“That’s what I said.” Tony rolls his shoulders back—that’s much better, without the shirt. The air on his sweaty skin is a relief, sends a quick, chill shiver down his spine. Feels normal. “Captain freaking America.”

“A dead national hero is annoying you?” Pepper asks, eyeing Tony. She’s judging him, he can tell.

“Yes. No,” Tony corrects. He holds up a hand, wobbles it back and forth. “Less on the dead, yes on the national hero. Probably _more_ on the national hero, too; if they downplayed that shoulder-to-waist ratio, who knows to what else they didn’t do justice.”

Pepper is outright staring at him.

“It’s a thing of beauty, Pep,” Tony says, solemnly.

“Captain America’s shoulders?”

“Oh, the rest of him, too. Magnificent, really.” Tony stops, and turns around to face her full-on so she can see him pulling his favorite disgusted expression. It’ll tell her how serious he is; he usually saves it for when she tries to get him to attend shareholder meetings. “Too bad he can’t take a joke.”

For a minute, she doesn’t say anything. Tony doesn’t get bored and turn away, because, wow. He’s never seen Pepper’s eyes this wide.

“Tony,” she croaks, after a second, “are you telling me that Captain America is _alive_? And you _spoke to him_?”

“Yep.” Tony sneers again. “He’s also an ass.”

“I’d think you’d appreciate that quality in a person,” Pepper says, a little faintly.

Tony shrugs, wipes a line of sweat off his brow with the back of his wrist before it can drip into his eye, and doesn’t deny it. He tightens one of the connectors on the hydraulics in the left knee joint. “Well, maybe I would’ve, if he weren’t a stick in the mud,” he goes far enough to admit.

Captain America hadn’t so much as cracked a smile the whole time Tony was in the room. That still stung. He’d _always_ been smiling, in the vanity shots. The ones from during _WWII_. What was there to smile about during WWII?

Blowing up Hydra bases, maybe. That was probably pretty fun.

Maybe Tony should have brought the guy a bomb or two. Agent Agent’s reaction would’ve been hilarious, at least.

Tony glances over at Pepper when he realizes it’s been really quiet for too long.

Pepper is staring at him some more. She’s got the fixed, glazed look of somebody who hasn’t blinked much in a while.

“Pep? You okay?”

“I,” she announces, “need a drink.”

“That,” says Tony, putting down his tinkering, “is a great idea.”

* * *

In a secret lab on a secret base, somewhere at a secret desert location, Agent Barton raises his eyebrows, and tells Director Fury, “Doors open both ways, right?”

The door opens.


	2. you’re not that much like me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter alone is longer than any other single fic in the 'verse so far—and _that's_ even though it only includes the things for which Steve and Tony are actually present. What have I done.
> 
> Obligatory disclaimer: Covers the events of _The Avengers_ as they occur in this universe, and as such, portions of the dialogue have been borrowed from the film. Some have been taken directly, some have been paraphrased, and some have been used but deliberately modified. If you've seen the film, you can probably tell which bit is which.
> 
> Go forth, and enjoy!

“Sir, Agent Coulson of SHIELD is on the line,” JARVIS says, out of the blue late one night, a couple of weeks after the laughably awful fiasco that was meeting Captain America.

“I’m not in,” Tony says, automatically. He wouldn’t entirely mind answering—he’s bored, and curiosity has ever been his besetting sin—but it’s habit to turn him down.

What does Agent Agent want, at this time of night? Tony didn’t do anything. He hasn’t blown anything up lately. He hasn’t even so much as thought about going back to needle Cap again—well, hasn’t thought about it much.

Tony has been _good_ , is the point. Practically a saint.

“He’s very insistent, Sir,” JARVIS replies. There’s a fraction of a pause. “He does not seem—himself.”

Tony’s eyebrows go up. “Well, who in hell is he, then?”

JARVIS huffs, or he probably would if he were a person. Instead, there’s just another pause, but Tony’s gonna consider it a huff. “His speech rhythms do not match recorded patterns,” JARVIS declares. “And his breathing is fractionally elevated.” Another pause. “As is his heart rate.”

“Huh,” says Tony. He considers, looks around the empty penthouse. At the glass of scotch in his hand, that he hasn’t got around to drinking. It’s only his second, he’s working up to it.

Tony reaches for his cellphone. “Oh, all right, put him through.”

“Mr. Stark,” Agent Agent’s voice comes through, immediately. Does he sound tense? Tony thinks he sounds tense. “We need to talk.”

“So, then talk,” Tony says, because really. He answered the phone, didn’t he?

The elevator on the other side of the penthouse dings, and the doors slide open. Agent Agent steps out, a black laptop in one hand and his phone in the other. He’s already hanging up.

“Huh,” Tony says again. He tosses his cellphone on the couch, and abandons his drink to go over and meet Agent Agent before he gets too deep in the room. “What, did you miss my pretty face?”

Agent Agent holds out the laptop. “We need you to look this over as soon as possible.”

Tony looks from the laptop to Agent Agent’s face and back. “I don’t like to be handed things,” he says.

Agent Agent stares at Tony. It would be a dead ringer for his usual blank gaze, except that after a second, a muscle ticks along his jaw. The corner of his eye twitches.

Tony goggles at him. “Wow, JARVIS was right,” he mutters, “you _aren’t_ yourself.”

“I’ll set it on the table.” Having said it, Agent Agent wastes no time, stepping to the nearest flat surface and dropping the laptop on it—almost throwing it down, really.

“That works,” Tony allows, still marveling at this strange almost-Agent Agent. “Did they reset your operating system, or something? Are you Agent Agent’s life model decoy?”

The muscle along Agent Agent’s jaw ticks again. “Just—Look it over, Stark.”

He’s back in the elevator before Tony decides how he wants to respond.

Well, _that_ was certainly interesting. And what’s on the laptop—even more interesting.

The Avengers, huh. A man from another planet, and a stolen glowy blue cube.

Well, Tony’s not bored anymore.

#

Fury comes to find Steve when he’s at the gym. It’s been three weeks since he woke up in the fake hospital bed, and Steve still hasn’t decided whether he likes Fury very much. He doesn’t seem like a _bad_ man, but Steve knows he doesn’t trust him, same as he doesn’t really trust Agent Coulson.

It’s obvious they’re playing a deeper game than he has all the pieces for, right now. They haven’t seemed to do him obvious wrong yet, at least, and they’ve definitely helped—as much as he _can_ be helped—so he’s been willing to go along, for a while. At least until they give him a reason to stop.

Not as though he has anything else to be doing.

“You should be out,” Fury says, and Steve isn’t surprised, because even knowing him for three weeks and as many meetings, is long enough to show he’s bad at pleasantries. “Celebrating.”

At the word, Steve has to lock his muscles to hold in a flinch. He still hasn’t told Fury, or anyone at SHIELD, about his soul bond. He’s sure they _would_ tell him to celebrate, that it was a good thing. Dr. Michaels would probably even suggest it was proof Steve was always meant to end up in this time.

Steve has no interest in celebrating. No interest in fitting into this time. He _shouldn’t_ be here, he knows that, a truth deep in his bones. He should be dead.

Like Bucky.

He isn’t dead. Instead he’s stuck here, in this loud, colorful place, where everything goes too fast—where he woke up with a soul bond.

Whoever’s on the other end of the bond is louder and more energetic even than normal, tonight. There’s an excited buzzing coming from the other side of his mental walls. He can’t block it all the way out no matter how hard he tries.

_That’s_ why Steve can’t sleep, why he’s here beating the stuffing out of a heavy bag in a deserted gym. Not anything Fury could possibly know. So he must be here for something else.

Fury’s still standing there, watching him, a file in one hand. Steve’s—not really in a hurry to give him whatever it is he’s after.

“When I went under, the world was at war. I wake up, they say we’ve won,” Steve tells Fury, and he can’t entirely keep the bitterness out of his voice. He’s not really trying too hard. “They didn’t say what we’ve lost.”

“We’ve made some mistakes along the way,” Fury says. He doesn’t look apologetic, or anything, but he does sound a little rueful. Probably he’s thinking of Steve’s wake-up call, here in this noisy place. Or maybe the wisdom of letting Howard’s son in to pester Steve. Either way, Steve figures he deserves that apology Fury’s not giving him.

Steve stifles a snort.

Fury must see something of it, because he gets a calculating glint in his eye for half a second. Then it’s gone, and something seems to go out of his shoulders. He holds up the file.

“I had a whole song and dance planned,” Fury says, gone sardonic. “Now I think I’ll just skip it.”

He reaches out and offers the file to Steve. There’s a part of him that doesn’t want to take it, but after a moment, he does. He doesn’t open it.

“You’re here with a mission,” he says, flat in response to Fury’s cool expression. He puts his eyes on the file.

“I am,” Fury replies, equally flat.

Steve’s fingers tighten on the folder.

“Captain Rogers,” Fury says, a little softer, but still without inflection or urgency. “We need your help.”

The thing is, Steve bets they probably do—it says a lot, that Fury’s here, in the middle of the night, in person, asking him this. Before this, Steve had only seen him _twice_ , in the whole time since the day he woke up.

“Are you in?”

“I’ll think about it,” Steve makes himself say, and shoves the file in his bag, unopened. He lifts the bag over his shoulder.

“There’s a full briefing packet waiting in your quarters,” Fury says. It might be Steve’s imagination, but he almost looks relieved. Like he thinks he’s got Steve, like he’s convinced Steve’s _in_ already. 

“Yeah, I bet there is,” Steve says. He walks out.

He means to leave it there, he really does. Spends the walk back to his quarters telling himself he’s not going to look at that packet, any more than he looked at the file. He doesn’t want to run a mission, to see combat, not ever again. He said ‘maybe’ to get away from Fury, not because he actually _meant_ to help.

He doesn’t have the energy to help. He barely has the energy to _walk_ , now that he’s not caught up in the mindless rhythm of beating the bag. He’d had to force himself into even that, there at the start, and he’d only done it in the first place because his damn soul bond wouldn’t shut the hell up.

It’s _still_ not quiet, even as Steve lets himself into his quarters, drops his bag on the floor.

The briefing packet’s sitting on the table, in plain view. Steve stares at it a second, trying to ignore the unceasing buzz of the bond. Then he turns his back.

He means to drop into bed, he really does. Except…

There’s a voice in the back of his head—not coming from his soul bond, just a memory of somebody, what they might’ve said.

_This ain’t like you, Stevie._

Steve flinches. It’s true, though, isn’t it?

_Thought you always fought the good fight, did the right thing. Stood up, like a punk, even when you shouldn’t’ve._

He would’ve, too. If he were still who he was before he crashed, before Bucky fell, he’d have taken Fury up on the offer. Hell, he’d probably have volunteered before Fury even got around to making the offer. But Bucky did fall, Bucky’s gone, Bucky’s _dead_ , and—

_Never thought I’d see the day._

and—

Steve’s still here, and turning his back on someone who needs help ain’t like him.

With snarl, Steve whirls back around and snatches the packet off the table.

All right, then. So he’ll help.

#

Pepper answers Tony’s call on the third ring, despite it being three in the morning. This is why Tony loves her, he reflects, through the steely determination he’s settled over his mind. He even wrapped his soul bond up in it; closed the connection off and locked it in a mental vault, because Tony hasn’t got the attention to spare for angry teenage hermits, not right now.

“Tony? What is it, what’s wrong?” she asks, sleep clearing from her voice even as she speaks. In the background, Tony thinks he hears movement, Happy’s voice calling her name—then, alarmed, Tony’s.

“Relax, hey, nothing’s wrong.” Tony pauses, reconsiders, while he does up the metal-free fasteners along his side. “Well, okay, nothing’s wrong with _me_.”

“Are you sure?” And of course Pepper would sound skeptical, she knows him so well. “Because it’s, it’s, wait, it’s a _quarter past three_?”

“Yep,” Tony says, with all the brightness and energy of the well-caffeinated.

“And nothing’s wrong? Tony!”

“Did he forget again that normal people sleep?” Happy’s voice asks, more awake, closer to the microphone. Or, it’s clear enough, maybe Pepper put him on speaker.

Well, Tony’s talking to them through JARVIS’s speakers while he pulls on the nonconductive under-suit he designed an hour ago, when he got done looking over Agent Agent’s laptop, and which JARVIS only finished fabricating ten minutes ago.

The guy with the glowy blue cube has a brother who can conduct lightning. The brother hasn’t shown up to this dance, at least not yet as far as SHIELD seems to know, and they logged him as ’friendly’ during his last appearance, but Tony fights in a _metal suit_ —he’s not taking chances with lightning-boy.

Point is, Tony’s in no position to complain about being put on speaker.

“Hiya, Hap,” he says, instead, and steps into the boots of the suit.

“Morning, boss,” Happy replies. There’s a stifled yawn. “You need us?”

“It sounds like he needs sleep,” Pepper mutters.

“Nah,” Tony replies, to both of them. It’s a little muffled. The armor is starting to assemble itself around him. “Just figured maybe I ought to give you a heads up.”

There’s a beat of silence from the other end of the call. It’s conveniently timed with the helmet snapping on over his head, and the line switching from JARVIS to the suit’s internal comms. Tony is a genius.

“A heads up about what,” Pepper demands, finally.

“This about your soul mate?” Happy adds, sounding almost excited. Bless him.

Tony snorts. “Nothing that happy, Happy, sorry.”

“ _Tony_ ,” Pepper presses, and she sounds dangerous.

“Look, I just wanted to tell you—”

“Then _tell us_ , already!”

“—I won’t be into the office in the morning,” Tony says.

There’s a beat. Tony uses the opportunity to take off. He’s got a lot of flying to do tonight, especially since he needs to get a few things from his lab in Malibu, before he heads for SHIELD. He’d better get started.

“You're never in the office in the morning,” says Pepper. Bless _her_ , now she sounds suspicious.

As she should.

“Well, really,” Tony says, “I won’t be in at all tomorrow.”

“Why not?” Pepper asks, it sounds like through her teeth. Happy, in the virtuous tone of a loyal bodyguard thinking only of his boss’s safety, adds, “Where are you gonna be?”

“Just running a little errand for SHIELD.”

Anther beat of silence, and another.

“Tony, the last time SHIELD was involved, you blew up New York City.”

“I did not blow up New York City!” Tony protests, genuinely indignant. The silence this time, from both of them, is accusing. “Okay,” he relents, grudgingly, “so I maybe set a few bits of it on fire, but I didn’t blow it up.”

“Tony,” Pepper snaps, and really, she and Rhodey are the only two people he’s ever met who can manage to say so many different things using just his name.

“What’s the errand?” Happy asks, before Tony has to answer Pepper.

“Hm. Let’s call it a rescue,” Tony decides. Rescue Agent Barton; rescue Dr. Selvig; rescue the cube; rescue the world. If the red and gold armor fits… “Mostly.”

“Tony!”

“Well, just don’t die, okay, Boss? It would reflect badly on me in a professional sense.” There’s a cheerfulness to Happy’s voice that sounds forced, but sincerely-meant. And this is why Tony loves Happy.

“You got it, Hap.”

“Be safe,” says Happy, and Pepper calms down enough to add, a little reluctantly, “Go do good, Mr. Stark.”

#

Agent Coulson doesn’t make any small talk on the flight out to whatever this secret base of SHIELD’s is. He’s quieter than Steve’s seen him yet, and the man was already pretty quiet; he’s being still, too. Tense, even.

“So, this Dr. Banner,” Steve starts, thinking to break the tension in the air, at least. He wouldn’t bother, except it’s not just Agent Coulson putting it there. Steve’s feeling pretty tense, himself.

The other end of his soul bond went quiet four hours ago, sometime while Steve was tearing through the briefing packet, nothing but ringing silence coming from out past Steve’s walls—and much as Steve had thought that would be a relief, it’s actually been the opposite. The bond has never been this quiet, not in the whole time since he woke up with it. His mind is _itching_ to figure out why, what’s going on. It’s the first time he’s actually felt curious about whoever might be on the other end of the bond.

He can’t let his walls down, though, not even to check. He’s got a mission, again; a mission means he has to be focused. He wouldn’t be able to focus, if he were finally exploring the other end of the bond. He knows himself well enough, in this place where he’s a stranger to everything, to know that much.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything that wasn’t in the brief,” Agent Coulson interrupts, before Steve can get any further. His voice is tight and clipped. He nods at the thing Steve’s holding, the impossibly slim screen he handed Steve when they boarded. “The files on the tablet should answer any questions you have.”

It maybe be the first time Steve has seen the agent with no desire to talk to Steve.

Steve puts his attention back on the screen.

#

There’s a redhead waiting when they land. Steve steps out of the jet first, taking her measure.

Her eyes slide past him like he’s not there, but even so, something tells Steve she’s read him, too. She doesn’t seem the type to miss much; that gaze, the half second it was on him, was too sharp. All of her’s sharp. There’s a gun on her hip, and her stance is that of someone who’s seen combat; someone who could use their body as a weapon, if they need to.

Bucky’d started standing sort of like that, after he came back from boot camp; he’d stood a _lot_ like that, there toward the end. The Howling Commandos had all stood like it, when they went out during the rare times they had leave.

She looks carved from marble, though, this woman—this agent, because obviously she must be an agent. Yet when Agent Coulson steps off the jet behind Steve, her eyes lock on him, and something in her seems to ease just a little.

“Coulson,” she says, not much of a greeting.

“Agent Romanov, this is Captain Rogers,” Agent Coulson returns, not looking at Steve, but tipping his head a little. Not like he really needed to; not like there could be anybody he means other than Steve.

“Ma’am,” Steve says.

“Hi,” she says, shortly, also not looking at Steve. Then, to Agent Coulson, “They’re starting the face trace.”

Agent Coulson gives a sharp nod. “You have Banner?”

“On it,” she says, returning the nod. She turns and steps away.

“Right.” Now, finally he glances at Steve, who sets his jaw, and doesn’t show how unnerved he is by the terse exchange. Agent Coulson is hardly a chatter box, but he usually talks more than this. “This way to the bridge, Captain Rogers.”

#

“Captain Rogers,” Fury says, as Steve walks onto the bridge behind Agent Coulson. “I see you decided to join us after all.”

Fury knew Steve was coming, he had to’ve; he sent Agent Coulson and the jet. Steve meets his eyes with a cool gaze of his own, and says only, “I hope I can be of some help.”

Agent Coulson, without saying anything to either of them, steps around both of them, and heads for a cluster of some agents on the side of the room, doing something with a whole bank of computers.

Agent Romanov comes in only a minute or two behind Steve and Agent Coulson. She’s leading another man.

“Glad you came, Dr. Banner,” Fury says, to the man, striding toward him with his hand out. Agent Romanov moves around them both, and heads for Agent Coulson.

Dr. Banner is an unassuming guy, who twitches away from being touched, in a way that’s not really flinching. He doesn’t seem afraid of anything, not even being the sole focus of Fury’s direct attention. “Glad to be asked, I guess?” he replies, with a shrug.

Fury’s handshake, for all that Dr. Banner pulled away for a moment before finally accepting it, is a more enthusiastic greeting than he’d offered Steve, or at least he wants it to seem like it is. There’s a calculated edge to it, though; it’s too friendly. Not what Steve’s seen from him so far.

Before Steve knows it, they’ve hashed out some kind of plan for finding this Loki person, who stole the Tesseract. A plan that uses a lot of words Steve hasn’t heard before, yes, but that’s never stopped Steve from understanding something when he needs to.

#

“ _You were made to be ruled._ ”

So, whoever this Loki fellow _thinks_ he is, he’s definitely the most _dramatic_ guy Steve’s ever fought. And that’s counting Schmidt, with _his_ long-winded speeches about world dominion, and his lurid, bony face. The Red Skull, indeed.

_You don’t have one of those, do you_ , in Bucky’s exhausted voice, half alarmed and half resigned. Like he was afraid Steve was going to say yes, but was prepared to stick with him, even so. Bucky always stuck with him.

Even though it kept him bondless and got him _dead_.

Steve fumbles a block, barely dodges in time. He shakes it off, and firmly puts thoughts of Bucky—of the too-quiet soul bond that’s still itching at the back of his mind—aside.

Now is not the time. For Bucky, for his soul bond, for any of it.

From somewhere not far away comes the strains of some loud, modern music.

Then there’s Howard’s son, landing in front of him in a shiny metal set of red and gold armor. They’d mentioned that, in the briefing packet—Iron Man, they called it—and Steve had wanted to be shocked that the sharp, fast talking man who’d breezed into and out of his quarters would also be a flying, armored vigilante who claimed before a congressional hearing that he’d _privatized world peace_. Steve hadn’t been able to muster any surprise at all, though; after all, this was the son of Howard Stark.

In person, Iron Man doesn’t seem as much like a miraculously advanced robot as Steve had expected. More like what it is, a clever man in a suit of armor.

Steve’s pretty sure he’d have pegged this as the work of a Stark, even if they hadn’t told him who’d done it. Even if he hadn’t known Howard had a kid. Somehow, he still would’ve known.

There's a whirring, a click, and the armor points both arms and an impressive array of weaponry at Loki.

“Make your move, reindeer games,” Stark’s voice taunts, sounding a little echoey and mechanical, filtering through whatever speakers are fitted into the armor.

Yes, that’s definitely the man who invaded Steve’s quarters, ripped out his heart, and used it for soccer practice.

Steve clenches his jaw to hold in his groan.

#

Loki doesn’t even have the dignity to wait ten seconds, after Tony puts him in the crosshairs of the big guns. Tony’s a little embarrassed for the guy—and not just because he gave up so fast.

Look, yeah, okay, the guy was wearing a helmet with huge antler handles when Tony showed up, just inviting _all_ sorts of innuendos—but stick-up-his-perfect-ass Captain America is standing right here too, somehow making skin-tight spangles look good and not ridiculous, and some things are just not worth listening to Fury be furious.

Besides, Tony doesn’t want Agent Agent carving out his heart with a rusty spoon, so. Yeah. Tony won’t be making any of those inappropriate comments, not even the ones that practically make themselves. It’s progress, right.

See, Pepper, he’s growing as a person.

“I’m embarrassed for you,” Tony tells Loki, instead, who has the gall to smirk back. The horns are gone, but he still looks like he stepped out of a bad Shakespeare play, and he just surrendered in twenty seconds flat. “So embarrassed.”

“Stark,” Cap says, coming up at Tony’s shoulder and radiating all kinds of stiff judgement.

“Captain,” Tony replies, doing his best impression of a mature adult. He ruins it a moment later, adding, “What, did you miss the old stomping grounds? Or should that be ‘killing grounds’? World War Two was such a long time ago, these things are so hard to get right.”

That’s not appropriate, either—it’s, what would Pepper and the PR team say, _actively problematic_ —but it just comes out without Tony even thinking about it.

The chiseled jaw flexes. Tony watches it, fascinated and a little excited. What’ll Cap do with no Agent Agent to usher Tony out of the room?

“Work now, bicker later,” Natasha snaps, over the comms, before Tony gets to find out.

“Aw, but—”

“Get Loki to the jet,” she says, over Tony’s intentionally dramatic whining.

Cap’s rippling jaw smoothes out a little, which is pretty enthralling. He bends to grab Loki—also pretty exciting to watch, especially from behind—probably intending to haul him up and drag him to the quinjet. He doesn’t even get a hand on him before Loki’s gliding easily to his feet, heading for the other side of the square, where the quinjet is landing.

_Huh_.

#

So, that was too easy.

“I don’t remember it being that easy,” Cap says. Tony twitches to hear his thoughts echoed that closely by Captain Killjoy. He smirks, big and sharp and mean, to cover it up, and glances over at their prisoner.

Loki’s sitting, wrists manacled together, in one of the seats. He hasn’t said a word, not even when he walked up the ramp with both hands held out in offering.

Way, way too easy.

Tony’s smile goes brittle. “You’re not wrong,” he tells Cap, instead of yanking his chain some more. 

Cap looks startled by the admission, which makes Tony feel annoyed for reasons that are _totally inexplicable_ , so he’s going to ignore it thank you.

A clap of thunder rumbles around them, shaking the quinjet. Tony throws his arms out for balance, watches Cap grab for the bulkhead to steady himself.

“What, couldn’t warn us we were flying through a storm,” Tony throws toward Natasha, only half-joking. _Tony’s_ not bothered by a little turbulence, or anything, he’s been through worse, but for a second there Cap had gone sheet-white, before he got ahold of himself. It’s not the fun kind of reaction that Tony likes.

“We _weren’t_ , a second ago,” she snaps back, with the tiniest hint of strain, which takes some of the wind out of Tony’s sails. He suspects, if she weren’t who she is, she’d sound a little freaked out.

Cap makes a noise, kind of startled. Tony swings back around, finds Cap staring at Loki and frowning. Tony looks too. His eyes narrow. Loki’s posture’s changed, tense and ready for a fight where it was languid and relaxed a second ago. He’s scanning the hold like he expects something to pop out from the shadows and attack him.

“Don’t tell me, you’re afraid of a little thunder,” Tony says, sounding exactly as suspicious as he feels.

“I’m not overly fond of what follows,” Loki replies. He must be as rattled as he looks, because it’s the first time Tony’s heard him speak since they captured him, and it doesn’t seem like he even meant to say it.

Tony opens his mouth.

Something heavy lands on the roof of the quinjet. Loki jerks against his seat harness, and stares up at the ceiling, with something that looks a lot like disbelief—except that doesn’t make any sense. Loki’s got no reason to disbelieve anything.

“What was _that_?” Cap says, voice sharp. Neither Loki nor Tony answers, and Cap glances toward the cockpit, but Natasha and the pilot don’t offer anything, either.

“Well,” says Tony, as whatever’s on the roof makes another loud thump, and Loki flinches again. “Let’s find out.” He hits the button to open the hatch and lower the ramp.

“What are you doing?” Cap yells, barely audible over the whipping of the wind as the ramp descends.

“Getting a look-see, if that’s all right with your Capness,” Tony hollers back, as cover for the fact that he has no idea. It—seemed like a good plan at the time. He’s never claimed to have very good impulse control.

It’s only half a moment from the hatch opening fully, not enough time to do _anything_ much less head out there, before there’s someone landing on the open ramp. Bigger, blonder, dressed in armor and an actual damn cape. He strides into the hold, his gaze zeroing in on their prisoner—and he stops. He stares.

Cap’s gloved fist comes down on the ramp switch, pulling it back up. Tony jumps; nobody else moves. The silence once it closes is loud and obvious.

“Hello, Thor,” says Loki, after a moment. He’s smiling, and there isn’t anything nice about it. “Have you missed me, then?”

“Yes,” says Cape Guy, like it’s easy fact. He takes a huge step toward Loki, the hand not holding a massive hammer raised, like he means to take hold of Loki—

Loki flinches, the tiniest motion, and Cape Guy goes still. Then he turns toward Tony and Cap, acknowledging them at last.

“I am Thor, Son of Odin, Crown Prince of Asgard,” he booms. Oh, goody; it’s lightning-boy. “I’m here to take Loki home.”

“You can’t mean to claim that Odin wishes not for the Tesseract,” Loki taunts. He looks weirdly incensed, now that Thor’s gaze isn’t on him. His reactions to Thor, ever since that first clap of thunder, are the only crack in his untouchable calm that Tony’s seen.

It’s a pretty damn big crack.

Thor does a very good show of grinding his teeth. “My father also wishes me to return with the Cube. It is not meant for mortal hands, and will be safer in our halls,” he adds.

“If it were up to me, I’d say you’re welcome to it, and him,” Cap says, looking strong-jawed and determined in the brief glance Tony spares his way.

Look, it bears repeating; Tony’s basically standing here in a tin can, in front of Thor-who-throws-lightning. Tony doesn’t really think he can spare more attention than that from Thor for _anything_. Not until and unless they decide he’s on their side—and even if they do, he’ll still be worth keeping an eye on.

Despite that resolution, though, Tony can’t help noticing that strong-jawed and determined is a really good look on Cap. Unfairly good. Tony kind of wants to smack him in the face with a cold fish, or maybe a whipped cream pie. Just to get rid of that look.

Cap finishes, “But you’re not getting Loki back until _we_ get back the people he took from us.”

“I will help you in this quest,” Thor says, without any kind of hesitation. “But Loki is mine. You must swear that once it is ended, he returns with me to Asgard.”

Cap glances at Tony, who jerks his shoulders in a shrug. It’s not _Tony’s_ call to make—if it was, he’d have made it already. Loki _off_ the planet sounds like a hell of a lot better deal than Loki anywhere _on_ it, even if he is locked up.

Technically, it’s not Cap’s call to make, either, but all of Dad and Aunt Peggy’s stories kinda give Tony the impression that Cap won’t let that stop him. Not if he thinks it’s a call that needs to be made. Killjoy or not, the pugnacious jaw the guy’s got going on right now suggests it’s not going to stop him now any more than it did then—and it _is_ a call that needs to be made.

Cap regards Tony for a second longer, while Tony keeps not stopping him. Then Cap’s chin jerks down in a sharp nod. He turns back to Thor.

“Once we have our people, he’s all yours.”

Thor’s shoulders relax, and he breaks out in a small smile. His lips only curl up a little, but somehow his whole face looks lighter. Like he’s really damned relieved about something and can’t help but show it.

Off to the side, Loki makes an odd, half-strangled noise. Thor’s eyes stray in his direction, before they jerk back like they’ve been burned. Tony looks over, too, couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to.

Loki looks _pissed_ , burning eyes glaring at the side of Thor’s head, an ugly sneer on his mouth. He’s probably grinding his teeth, because his jaw is tense, and he doesn’t speak.

“You have my thanks,” Thor is saying, as Tony looks back around. “And my aid.”

“Oh, Fury’s gonna _love_ this,” Tony hears Natasha mutter, from up front. She doesn’t try to argue with Cap’s call, though, and it’s not even like she’s wrong.

Tony’s kinda looking forward to seeing Fury pissed off at somebody else, actually. It’s gonna be fun.

#

They hand Loki off to a bunch of SHIELD agents as soon as they land on the helicarrier—an actual _helicarrier_ , how cool is _that_? Tony swung by to drop things off before heading for Stuttgart to crash Cap’s party, and he’s still not over it.

The alarming thing about them taking Loki is that he goes without a word of complaint. At some point on the flight back, he’d stopped glaring at Thor, and started smirking again. They’d all pretended not to notice, but Tony’s still got the creepy-crawlies from it.

Thor’s eyes bore into Loki’s back as he’s escorted away, like it’s taking extreme effort not to follow him, and that’s a bit of the creepy-crawlies, too.

Without asking where they’re going, Cap falls in behind Natasha as she stalks out of the hanger, so Tony follows, too. Not like he has any idea where they’re going, or where anything is on this floating metal fortress. Well, except the cargo bay where he dropped his toys. He could find that again.

After a second, he hears Thor’s boots tromping after them.

Their destination is apparently the bridge, as Tony discovers when a pair of real actual blast doors slide open to reveal Fury standing in the middle of a sea of busy little shield underlings, and bank upon bank of monitors. Cap doesn’t look surprised by any of it, which is a bit rude, since even Tony’s vaguely impressed.

Clearly, Cap’s already been here. Which means Tony missed his first reaction to this beautiful sea of modern technology. That’s just rude.

Tony wants to complain that they seem to have called in Captain Killjoy before they called him in, but he can’t. Not really. Killjoy or not, Cap seems handy to have around. Also apparently willing to be dropped single-handed into a fight with a demi-god out of Norse myth, so maybe not in his right mind, but handy anyway.

Nice, big, hands. Long, strong fingers and broad palms wrapped up in red—was it leather? Seriously? What hack had they gotten to make that sideshow of a combat suit?

Probably wasn’t even fireproof.

Focus, Tony.

Right. Helicarrier; bridge; lots of agents and even more computers. It’s like a nerdy military space fantasy come to life.

“Well, this is shiny,” Tony declares, walking deeper into the room and looking around. “Why did nobody tell me you had such a shiny flying base?”

“Maybe because it’s meant to be a _secret base_?” Fury suggests, voice dry. He’s doing remarkably little yelling, not even about the big shiny Asgardian they’d just brought onto his helicarrier, when he’d only ordered the one not-so-big-or-shiny Asgardian brought in.

That’s kind of rude, too. Tony’d been looking forward to the yelling.

“That’s a terrible reason not to tell me. Very weak,” Tony says. He shakes his head, points an accusatory finger at Fury. “You know I like shiny things. And knowing things.”

The finger he’s pointing with is the same hand he just used to plant his JARVIS bug on one of the central computers. He’s wanted a hard line into SHIELD’s secure systems for weeks now. This is a golden opportunity, and he tries never to miss those. Besides, it was an easy drop, and a beautiful bit of misdirection from his slight of hand; he’s a magician.

“Precisely why we didn’t tell you,” says Fury, none the wiser.

“ _Weak_ ,” Tony insists.

“Director, this is Thor,” Natasha cuts in, jerking a thumb at Thor, as he finally trails them into the room. “Says he wants to help.”

Fury’s eye cuts to Thor. “Does he, now.”

“Where have you taken Loki?” Thor asks, planting his feet and crossing his massive arms.

Fury takes this in impassively. “To a secure holding cell.”

“And he has not been harmed?”

Fury’s eyebrow might have twitched. A tiny bit, maybe. Tony notices a lot of the underlings sharing bewildered glances.

“See for yourself,” Fury says.

He waves at Hill, who strides over to the big command table behind the half-circle of pulpit monitors that seem to equal a helm for Fury to stand at. She leans over, swipes at the screen imbedded in the tabletop—very nice, Tony hadn’t expected such high-tech toys from SHIELD—and a video feed pops up. Tony edges closer to get a look.

It shows Loki, standing in a big glass box, staring straight up at the monitor. He’s still smirking.

Thor crosses to the table in three steps, and bends to stare at the video like it, and Loki, will disappear if he doesn’t.

Okay, then.

#

Fury, Hill, and Natasha have a swift, low-voiced conversation. Tony can’t make out the words, even though he tries really hard. After a couple minutes of this, Fury turns with a flare of his leather trench coat, and leaves the room. Coulson follows him without a word.

Cap has collapsed into a chair at the table, a fair distance from Thor and the video of Loki. He’s gazing off across the room, but he doesn’t seem to be seeing anything. He looks almost exactly like the man Tony meet a couple of weeks ago, just in a spangly suit instead of standard-issue sweats. His hands, lacking a cup of coffee, are lying loose on the table.

The sight makes Tony uncomfortable, so he looks around.

Thor is still staring at the video screen with the kind of intensity usually reserved for starving men looking at a ribeye. He looks like he wishes he could reach through and touch Loki, maybe grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. Or maybe hug him. It’s kind of a hard look to read.

Well, maybe he can get a translation.

Tony strolls over to Thor, leans over his shoulder to check out the video feed. Nope, still just Loki smirking up at the camera. Like he knows they’re watching. Creepy town, population: that guy. “So,” Tony starts, “what’s the story with you and Smirky McSmirkyson?” 

“Whom do you mean?” Thor asks, without looking up.

“You know. _Loki_.”

Thor lifts his head, his attention coming away from the screen for the time it takes to glance at Tony. Then he drops his gaze again. “It’s as I said in the air,” he says. “I’ve come to take him home.”

“Because he’s your brother,” Natasha supplies, from over Thor’s other shoulder. Her voice is hard.

Tony jumps a little, he’ll admit it, but only because she’s a ninja so there’s no shame in her sneaking up on him.

There’s a pause. “Yes,” Thor says, but he keeps on with the intense staring contest through the screen.

Oh, now that’s just not even hard to see through. It’s amazing SHIELD was even fooled enough by it the first time to bother putting it in their records.

“Wow, you are a _terrible_ liar,” says Tony.

Thor doesn’t flinch, or blush. At first, Thor doesn’t even react. After a second, he says, “Yes, I know.”

That’s it.

“JARVIS, remind me never to look into Asgardian family dynamics,” Tony says, very loudly.

“So noted, Sir,” JARVIS replies, from the nearest loudspeaker.

Across the table, Cap twitches. Tony gives him the raised eyebrows. “You got a problem, Capsicle?”

Cap hesitates a beat, but shakes his head. Whatever. His problems aren’t Tony’s. If he won’t voice ‘em, Tony doesn’t have to worry about them.

“Well, _I’ve_ got one,” Hill snaps, without moving from Fury’s spot at the not-helm. Tony looks over. She’s glaring at him.

“You do? With _me_?”

“With your AI hijacking our PA system,” she says.

Tony holds his hands out wide, shrugs and beams at her. “What? Is it _my_ fault JARVIS likes to follow me?” He flashes a grin, the one Rhodey had once called his _please punch me_ face. “He worries, you know.”

Hill keeps glaring a second. She huffs, and turns away. “Unbelievable.”

#

Steve doesn’t know what else to do with himself while they wait for the next move in this chess game, so he heads for the lab where they set up Dr. Banner.

Turns out, Stark must’ve had the same idea, when he wandered off the bridge twenty minutes ago.

“No, really, what’s your secret?” he’s asking Dr. Banner, when Steve walks in. “Yoga? A crapton of weed?” He pokes Dr. Banner sharply in the side with the screwdriver or whatever it is in his hand.

Dr. Banner jerks away, but doesn’t actually flinch, and thankfully doesn’t turn green. Still, Steve feels a rising tide of annoyance at Stark’s recklessness.

Not that he cares; Stark’s nothing to him. He can’t exactly claim to have ever had a problem with _recklessness_ , either, but, damn it.

He’s just so _annoyed_.

“Hey,” he says, voice whip-crack sharp. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Stark spins around, spots Steve, and grins. His eyes light up with something—something unholy.

#

“Is everything a joke to you?”

Tony meets his eyes and smirks, mostly for the interesting way it turns Cap’s face pink. “Funny things are.”

Cap’s nostrils flare. It’s a thing of beauty. Beautiful annoyance.

He’s never had great self-restraint, but this time Tony doesn’t even try to pretend he’s reining himself in. He sets out to see how far under Cap’s pretty peaches-and-cream skin he can claw before the man snaps and hits him.

He makes it three minutes, bringing up Fury’s Eyepatch of Secrets and a couple of other things that seem like they might get a rise out of soldier-types with no sense of humor. No dice; Cap just keeps giving him that disdainful look down his perfectly straight nose. Then he makes a crack about Cap unbending enough to break a rule or two.

“Maybe disobey an order now and then. You know, for fun,” he says, showing his teeth. “Then again, I bet you’ve never disobeyed an order in your _life_.”

Cap goes _white_.

He keeps doing that, at the weirdest things. Tony’s natural curiosity really wants him to figure out what’s up with that.

So, yeah, Cap doesn’t actually _hit_ Tony, but he does storm out of the lab like he _wanted_ to.

Tony calls it a success. He turns back to do more science with Banner.

#

What Steve finds, when he goes looking for secrets SHIELD might be hiding, are guns. Many, many crates of guns. Guns which look a _lot_ like the weapons Hydra had used.

Steve’d been looking forward to never seeing this kind of thing again.

He can only imagine the furious noise Bucky would’ve made, if he’d seen this. Steve doesn’t like even the thought.

He needs answers, for this. He’s going to get them. He’ll make sure of it.

#

Agent Romanov walks out of the containment room as Steve’s passing it. There’s a grim set to her mouth, one that goes beyond even the tension that’s been present since he first met her. He’s glad all over again that he’d opted not to bring one of those guns back with him to throw under Fury’s nose.

That’s not a confrontation he wants to have with her, especially not in the corridor, _especially_ not with her looking like that.

“What did he say?” Steve asks.

“Loki?” Agent Romanov asks, as if he could have meant anyone else. Steve nods anyway—she _does_ look pretty distracted—and she replies, “That he was going to have Barton kill me.”

That isn’t exactly what Steve was expecting, but probably it should have been.

“Oh.”

He is surprised to hear Agent Romanov mutter, “I almost hope he tries it.”

“Why?”

She doesn’t say anything, but gives him a dagger-like, sidelong look. It’s almost disappointed, as though she thought he’d be _smarter_ than that. Steve sketches out half a dozen scenarios that might lead a spy to wish for a hypnotized colleague to attack them, and none really make sense, unless the act of attack would snap the other person out of it—but why would it do _that_ , unless— 

“Oh,” he says, getting it. “ _Oh_.”

“Yeah,” Agent Romanov says, her voice cool and bland. You’d never know to look at her that she’d just gone and told Steve who her soul mate is.

“Well,” Steve says, as he considers it. “That oughta wake him up.”

“Yeah,” Agent Romanov repeats.

#

The next time there’s more than just Tony and Banner in the lab, it turns pretty quick into another poking party. Thor comes in with Fury, then Natasha with Cap on her heels. They all get a little angry, Tony included.

Things are really starting to escalate—all these personalities sparking like they’re about to turn into fireworks—when all of a sudden Natasha stiffens. It’s obvious enough that Tony has no trouble picking up on it, and that’s _terrifying_. What could make a super-spy tense like that when they’re already on high alert? It must be something _really_ ser—

Over the loudspeaker, Agent Agent’s voice says, “Director, we have a problem.”

Fury half-lifts a hand to the bluetooth in his ear. He’s staring at Natasha, his eye a little wider than usual. “Tell me something I _don’t_ know. We—”

“Barton’s approaching,” Natasha says, her head turning, looking toward a wall like she can see through it.

“We’ve got unauthorized incoming,” Agent Agent says, voice overlapping hers. “They’re responding to our radio transmissions, but it’s definitely suspicious.”

“Vector?” Natasha demands, hand on her ear now too.

“Due west.”

Natasha turns on her heel, letting loose with a string of something in Russian—Tony doesn’t have to actually speak the language to get the gist. He knows swearing when he hears it. She’s at the door before anyone else has a chance to say anything.

She’s already running.

“Open fire,” Fury says, whipping around and heading for the door as well. “Now.”

“It’s _Barton_ ,” Agent Agent says, instead of the confirmation Tony was expecting. His voice sounds—wrecked. And that’s wrecked for a normal person, not for Agent Agent. What the _fresh hell_ is going on here.

“If he hasn’t used a safecode, we have to assume he’s still compromised, which means he’s not here for anything we’re gonna like,” Fury snaps. “Blow them out of the sky.”

There’s a pause that feels very long.

“All hands,” Hill’s voice calls, with the echoing quality of a ship-wide broadcast. “Fire on incoming craft. I repeat, incoming aircraft _is hostile_ , open fire.”

Somewhere outside there’s an explosion; the helicarrier actually _rocks_.

“Return fire!” Hill’s voice says, sharper than before. “Escort Charlie-Tango-Niner, come about and return fire!”

There’s another explosion outside. This time, Tony places the sound of it as a missile detonating.

Cap’s hand shoots to his ear. His brows draw together, and he opens his mouth like he’s going to argue with something—then he snaps it closed, his eyes darting to Tony’s.

“Understood, Agent Romanov,” he says, a distant tone that suggests it’s directed into his own earpiece. Of course the big lug never took it off; he never even took off his combat suit. The next moment his big, gloved hand is around Tony’s elbow.

“What the—“ Tony starts, trying and failing to jerk his arm away. Cap’s grip is like cast iron. Tony imagines he can feel the heat of it even through the layers of fabric between them.

“Put on the suit, Stark,” Cap says, and when Tony’s still going to protest, “Agent Romanov needs you to catch her soul mate.”

What—

_Ah_.

Okay, then.

“Of course she does,” Tony says, on autopilot, already heading for the cargo bay where he sent the suit when he took it off. He’s doing his best not to think of a face that believed in him smiling bloody-mouthed as it drifted off into death, at peace for the first and only time Tony’d ever seen him.

Tony may not be used to the idea that he has a soul mate, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what it is for someone to lose theirs. He doesn’t ever want to see it again. He won’t, not if he can help it at all.

#

The attacking quinjet is still in the air, somehow, when Tony makes it out into the open air. It’s banking this way and that, trying to avoid the fire from the helicarrier. It doesn’t look like it’s going well for them. There’s a man dangling out of the hatch, hanging on by his legs and to all appearances trying to take out the hellicarrier with a _bow and arrows_. It’s like something out of a comic book. Or a circus.

A missile from the helicarrier connects with the quinjet, sends it spinning. It lurches, and starts to plummet, tumbling out of the sky and spilling its occupants into the open air. Including Mr. Trickshot there, who loses purchase on whatever he’d hooked his leg around, and gets sent flying wide of the jet’s downward trajectory.

Natasha had claimed her soul mate was on that quinjet. Welp, nothing for it—Tony dives after it.

“Natasha, what am I looking for, here?” Tony asks over the comms, trying to decide toward which specific failing man in a tac suit he should be aiming.

“Barton’s an archer,” Natasha snaps back, then nothing else, even when he calls her name again. Apparently that’s all she’s willing to give him.

All right, whatever. Tony can work with that.

An archer. See also: Arms.

Well, and the bow is a pretty big clue, too.

Once he knows which one is Barton, it’s nothing for Tony to scoop him up by the back of his tac vest. Barton struggles, of course he does, but it’s not like they’re particularly far away from the ground at this point, so he doesn’t struggle all _that_ much.

#

Steve doesn’t see any action, during Agent Barton’s assault on the carrier. Agent Romanov comes racing back into the lab a minute after Tony, Fury, and Thor all leave it in different directions. It’s only Steve and Dr. Banner left; Dr. Banner is still working over the equipment, but Steve is still here because he just doesn’t have anywhere more important to go.

 

“Dr. Banner, I think you should come with me,” Agent Romanov says, barely clearing the threshold before the words are out.

“Didn’t you already give my room to Loki?” Dr. Banner asks, lifting his head to give her a narrow look.

Her mouth pinches. “If Barton gets on this ship, or Loki gets loose, we don’t know what could happen. To _any_ of us. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?”

Dr. Banner hesitates a second. His head cocks, like he’s listening to something, even though he doesn’t have any kind of comm in. A soul mate? None had been listen in the file that SHIELD gave Steve, but that doesn’t really mean much.

After a moment, Dr. Banner sighs. “Oh, all right,” he mutters, and sets down whatever that tool is he was just using to do whatever. “But if you don’t let me out again after, the mess is on your head, not mine.”

He follows Agent Romanov out of the lab.

Steve goes with them. They don’t really need him, no, but nobody else seems to, either.

The corridors are all eerily quiet. It isn’t as hectic as Steve would have expected. If it weren’t for the safety lights on in all the hallways and the warning blaring through the loudspeakers, he wouldn’t even believe they were under attack.

“Got him,” Stark says, over the comm, just as the heavy metal double doors slide closed on the empty store room where they’ve secured Dr. Banner

He’d looked cheerful enough about it, maybe a little resigned; he’d made a joke about asking for a magazine.

Stark’s voice again, “Where am I dropping him, Natasha?”

“The hanger,” Agent Romanov answers without hesitation, spinning on her heel and heading that direction.

Steve follows her, again. He doesn’t know what else to do. It’s becoming kind of a theme. He’s—not fond of it.

Stark flies into the carrier bay, a man who must be Agent Barton dangling from one gauntleted hand by the back of his combat vest.

“Agent Romanov,” he says, somehow managing to sound jaunty even through his speakers, “is this yours?”

He dumps Agent Barton on the floor several yards in front of their feet.

There’s one still moment, where Agent Barton lies panting supine on the floor and the rest of them just stand there looking at him. It doesn’t last long. Agent Barton looks up, eyes a blue so clear and bright they almost appear to glow. They go straight to Agent Romanov.

“Natasha,” he says, in an eery, too-calm voice. “That was stupid of you.”

“We’ll see,” Agent Romanov replies, without moving.

“Stupid,” Agent Barton repeats. He lunges to his feet, placid face a disturbing mismatch for the violence of his movements.

Agent Romanov takes a step forward like she’s going to meet him—and then without warning spins into a full roundhouse kick, her foot connecting with the side of Agent Barton’s advancing head. A solid thunk, and Agent Barton drops.

Agent Romanov settles back on her heels, at ease, and looks down at the unconscious agent. She smiles.

“Well, if I’d known you were just going to attack him after I caught him for you, I might not have bothered,” Stark says, faceplate snapping open.

“That wasn’t an attack. It was cognitive recalibration,” Agent Romanov replies, cool as you please. She’s still smiling. “He’s fine now.”

Stark looks very pointedly down at Agent Barton’s unconscious body.

Agent Romanov stops smiling, thank God, but she apparently only does it so that she can grace Stark with a withering look of disdain. “Loki’s brainwashing’s gone,” she says, enunciating each word with great care.

This time, they all look down at Agent Barton’s body. He hasn’t moved.

“Are you sure that worked?” Steve asks, doubtful.

She nods. “I am.”

“But how can you—” Stark begins.

“I’m his soul mate, Stark,” she snaps. “I know.”

Stark lifts both hands, and actually takes two steps back. “Fine, fine. I’ll take your word for it.”

This time, Agent Romanov ignores him. She looks up, down the corridor. Steve follows her gaze, but there’s nothing there. Not at first.

After a minute, Steve hears footsteps pounding from around the corner. A moment later, Agent Coulson appears. He’s moving at a respectable sprint despite the blood dripping down his arm from some sort of wound on his shoulder. His jacket is missing, and the left half of his shirt is already soaked through with red.

Trailing a few feet behind him, panting and struggling to keep up, there’s what must be a medic, clutching a first aid kit. Her eyes are fixed in Agent Coulson’s back, and there’s a worried frown on her face. Thor is a few feet behind _her_ at a leisurely walk, keeping pace with long, easy strides. He’s scowling down at his boots, but not watching where he’s going doesn’t seem to have prevented his following the other two.

As Agent Coulson skids to a stop on the other side of Barton’s supine form, the medic stumbles to a halt, too. She bends over, free arm braced on her knee, and gulps for air twice.

“Sir,” she says, pleading, and still panting a little. “Sir, please. I need to treat your wound.”

Agent Coulson ignores the medic. He stares down at Agent Barton, his face blank, expressionless. After a moment, he lifts his head and meets Romanov’s eyes across Agent Barton.

“Did you punch him in the head?” he asks.

“I kicked him in the head, actually.”

Agent Coulson’s eyes drop down to Agent Barton again, then come back up. “How’d you know it would work?”

Agent Romanov’s only answer is one eyebrow sliding up a fraction of an inch.

“Ah,” says Agent Coulson, as if she’d just made a compelling argument. “I see.”

“Sir, _please_ ,” the medic says, straightening. She still looks flushed and a little winded, but she’s not panting so hard anymore.

Agent Romanov shifts her gaze to the medic. “What’s Coulson’s status?” she asks. 

The medic glances over, and her face takes on a determined set. “Loki stabbed him, sir. With that glowing spear thing.”

Agent Romanov’s eyes snap back to Agent Coulson. “He _what_.”

“It was practically a graze,” says Agent Coulson. “Thor knocked his aim off.”

Agent Romanov’s eyes narrow. “You,” she says, pointing at the medic without looking away from Agent Coulson, “get him to medical. See he’s treated.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” the medic says. Her eyes dart between them. “And if he won’t go?”

“Sedate him,” Agent Romanov snaps, giving the medic a gimlet eye. “Any means necessary.”

Agent Coulson grunts. He looks like he wants to roll his eyes. “That won’t be necessary,” he says. Judging only by his voice, it’d be hard to tell he’d just been stabbed. “I’ll come quietly.”

“You’d _better_.”

“Is anybody going to do anything about this guy?” Stark asks, nudging at Agent Barton’s prone body with the toe of one metal boot.

“I’m on it,” Agent Romanov tells Stark. The medic takes the opportunity to grab Agent Coulson’s uninjured arm and start dragging him away. He really does go quietly.

“Oh really?” Stark eyeballs her. Steve can’t entirely blame him; Agent Romanov can clearly handle herself, and he’d bet she’s stronger than she looks, but she’s also a half a foot shorter and at least two stone under Agent Barton’s weight. “All by yourself?”

She fixes him with the same steely look she’d used on the medic. “Yes, by myself. You pretty boys just get back to the bridge, see if you can make yourselves useful.”

Well, then. If she doesn’t want any help, Steve’s not going to make her take it.

#

The alarms have all been shut off, by the time they make it to the bridge. Tony can barely tell the difference between this post-battle flurry of activity, and the pre-battle one he’d witnessed when he first walked in here.

Fury comes striding in through a door on the other side of the bridge just after they enter. “Sit rep,” he barks, making the same survey of the room that Tony had.

“We lost Loki,” Hill says, straightening up from the monitor over which she’d been hunched.

“We what?” Fury asks, scowling, and whipping around to glare at her specially. “Do you want to say that again?”

Hill raises one eyebrow at him. “No, I don’t. It’s true, though.”

“Damn it. How did that happen?”

“Turns out, your magic-proof cage wasn’t quite as magic-proof as you lead us to believe,” says Tony, because he can read between the lines just fine. Nobody from Barton’s little assault team got on board, which means Loki must’ve got out on his own.

“It could not have held Loki for a moment, had he not allowed it,” Thor says, absently. He hasn’t stopped scowling.

Tony, Fury, Hill, and pretty much everyone else on the bridge all turn to stare at him.

“What,” Fury grinds out.

Thor shrugs. “Mere glass and steel cannot hope to contain Loki, should he wish to leave.”

“You couldn’t’ve mentioned this _earlier_?”

“I presumed you were aware,” says Thor. “Did you not say Loki seemed the only one who wanted to be here?”

Fury looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel somewhere important. Maybe his brain.

“Next time,” Hill says, doing a really good job of not looking at Fury without making it _look_ like she’s not looking at him on purpose, “don’t presume anything. You have information, go ahead and share.”

“As you wish,” Thor says. He pauses, looks like he’s fighting with himself over something. “I know whence Loki has gone.”

“So do I,” says Banner, edging into the room from god-knows-where.

“Well,” says Fury, turning to them, still looking pissed. “Where is he?”

Banner looks at Tony. He winces.

No.

“Oh, you’re shitting me,” Tony whines.

“What?” Cap asks, looking between them.

“Stark Tower,” Banner says, in the kind of tone usually used to apologize for things. “Loki’s at Stark Tower.”

“We must make haste for your New York City,” Thor says.

Tony scowls. “I’m gonna kick his ass _so hard_.”

#

Loki’s at Stark Tower.

So is the missing Dr. Selvig, crouching on the roof. There’s a fancy device next to him, with a glowing blue cube at the center of it. The thing looks complete enough to be—worrisome. Go with worrisome.

“You can’t stop it,” Dr. Selvig calls, rising to his feet from where he was kneeling next to the device. He doesn’t appear to have shaved, slept, or possibly eaten in the three days since his abduction. His eyes are glowing lurid blue, just like Barton’s had before he’d been knocked out—heh, get it?—of the mind whammy.

“Oh, yeah?” Tony asks, running a quick scan of the device. Not powered up, yet; not even properly hooked into the Tower’s energy system. “Pretty sure we can.”

Natasha, who dropped out of the quinjet onto the other side of the roof a minute ago and has been sneaking up on Dr. Selvig, springs into action. She kicks him in the head.

“What?” she asks, when Thor makes a wordless noise of reproach over the comms. “It worked on Clint.”

“Speaking of things that worked on Clint,” says Barton, with a note of urgency. Tony looks up. The guy had insisted on coming along when they’d said they were going after Loki, and Natasha swore up and down he was in control of himself, so they let him. Now he’s half-hanging out of the back of the quinjet.

What is _with_ this guy and the disregard for spine-chilling heights and tempting fate with lethal falls, seriously. Tony knows he used to be a performer, but this is taking things too far—and that’s coming from _Tony_.

Barton’s got his bow out and pointed at something on Tony’s penthouse balcony. “Could we maybe worry about the crazy guy with the spear of destiny, now?”

“Loki,” Thor breathes, and drops for the balcony.

Oh, this should be a creepy-crawly riot. Tony scoops up Natasha and drops after him.

#

Turns out, they don’t really get to listen to any monologuing. Thor and his earnest intensity take up all of Loki’s attention for the first, ah, call it thirty seconds. It’s long enough for Tony to drop Natasha behind Loki.

Him, she doesn’t kick in the head after sneaking up on him, just stuns with some handy electrical gizmo in the cuffs of her combat suit.

“There,” Tony says, retracting his faceplate and holding out both arms like a victorious gladiator. “Problem solved.”

#

It’s not quite as easy as Stark makes it sound, of course.

“Loki did not come here unaided,” Thor explains, once they’ve all gathered in Stark’s living room.

Loki’s still here, because SHIELD haven’t arrived to take custody of him. He’s lying on the floor on the other side of the room, but Thor hasn’t seemed concerned about him escaping—not since Thor planted the hammer on his chest and stepped over him to confab with the others over at the bar.

Steve _thinks_ Loki’s still unconscious, given he hasn’t gotten up yet, but it’s hard to tell. Guy should be waking up soon, probably, and Steve’d feel better if they had him properly locked up by the time that happened.

Thor goes on, “If the true masters of the Chitauri don’t receive what they required of him, they will not rest until they have revenged themselves upon him.”

“I’m not seeing the part of that where we should care,” Agent Romanov says, arms crossed.

Thor looks chagrined, but unmoved. “I begrudge you not that you don’t,” he says. “Even so, I cannot allow it to come to pass.”

“Because he’s your brother, right,” Stark says, like it’s some kind of joke.

“Yes,” Thor replies, nodding. “And because he is— _Loki_.”

Stark looks like this, frankly bizarre, response leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He takes a slug of whatever that amber liquid is that he poured himself a while ago.

It’s his second. Not that Steve’s counting.

“I will not ask for your aid,” Thor continues, looking solemn and grim. “The Chitauri have not touched your world. There is no justice to be had for you in assaulting them.”

“But there is for you?” asks Dr. Banner, eyebrows up. He’d strolled into the jet behind Steve, when they were loading up, and nobody else’d said anything. Steve hadn’t, either; if they were in time to stop Loki’s plan, it wouldn’t matter, and if they weren’t, he might come in handy.

They’d been in time, of course, so now Dr. Banner gets to hang out with the rest of them and, apparently, debate the fate of Loki and Dr. Selvig’s device.

Thor’s jaw tenses, and his face gets grimmer. His eyes look very, very old. “Midgard is safe, but not every realm may claim it so. I am of Asgard; I must do what I may.”

_There are men laying down their lives. I’ve got no right to do any less than them._

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, and it’s like he can hear Bucky groaning in dismay right in his ear, a comforting sense of rightness in the world. It almost makes him smile. “I’m from Brooklyn. I do what I gotta do, too.”

“What he said,” says Agent Barton. He crosses his arms and gives Thor a challenging look; the scabbed-over cut on his forehead only adds to the picture. “Well. Minus the Brooklyn. I’m from Ohio.”

“You’re from the _circus_ ,” Stark corrects, pointing an accusing finger at Agent Barton. He uses the hand holding the booze. “I’ve read your file.”

Thor’s eyes lose some of that daunting age, and they give an impatient flash. “My friends—” he starts.

Stark spins on him, the finger still up. He stretches his arm out farther, extends the finger even more, in emphasis, probably. “You,” he says. “Listen up. What these nice young men are _trying_ to say, is that you better believe none of us are staying here.”

“Thor, of _course_ we’re going to help you,” says Romanov. She gives him a smile that’s all teeth. “I barely got to hit anything.”

Thor looks around at them all, seeming to consider. He smiles, finally, and says, “I shall be honored to have your aid.”

#

Getting Loki stashed somewhere non-threatening, though, is apparently easier said than done. They get him back to SHIELD mostly without a problem, despite Thor having some sort of break from sanity and deciding to let Loki up to have some sort of vitally important close-talking discussion. Steve’s still not sure what that was supposed to have been about. As Stark had complained—very loudly, through his third drink—it had mainly just looked like a married couple bickering past the lawyers at their own divorce proceedings.

Thankfully, Agent Barton takes it upon himself to shoot a tranquilizer arrow into Loki’s ass while he and Thor are having their little not-quite-brotherly spat from less than an arm’s length apart. Steve isn’t sure what’s up with that, either. Seems like if you put those two in a room, they wind up closing in on each other, one way or another.

Steve is reminded of magnets, and worse, of two punk kids from Brooklyn, following each other everywhere. It makes him uncomfortable, even more than just the way Thor’s eyes hone in on Loki every chance they get.

Everybody else must find it a little unnerving, too, because it’s currently only Steve and Stark braving the experience. Fury had stalked off after his fifth suggestion for containing Loki had been met with Loki smirking and Thor shaking his head, saying, “He could escape that.”

Fury’d been the last hold out; most of them had left the minute they saw Loki strapped to the gurney, with a hammer as big as his head in the middle of his chest and Thor hovering like a storm cloud at his side. Not that Steve really blamed them—Again, magnets, and Thor’s unwavering stare.

“—that work?” Stark asks.

“No,” Thor says.

Stark throws his hands up, at the same time as the door behind him swings open, and he says, “Well give me _something_ here, big guy, because I’m starting to run out of ideas—and let me tell you, that doesn’t happen. I don’t like it.” It’s half a shout; Steve hadn’t even seen him crack this much under the influence of Loki’s scepter.

Hill clears her throat as she closes the door. They all swing to look at her. Well, probably they all do. Thor might keep looking at Loki, Steve can’t actually say.

“Fury called somebody for help. He says try these,” she says, tossing something at Thor, who catches it without flinching. He frowns down at it, then starts turning it this way and that.

It’s a pair of manacles, Steve sees. Dark metal, some sort of pattern etched into the side and glowing a faint lavender.

“Oh, he _called_ somebody. What, old one-eye grouch has _people_ for stuff like this?” Stark says, not seeming to waste any interest on the fancy magic cuffs. Hill arches one eyebrow at him, and Stark scoffs, shakes his head looking disgusted with himself. “Who am I kidding, of course he’s got people for magic. He’s probably got a whole village for this. Doesn’t he?”

“Fury has a source,” Hill says, her voice mild.

She might as well have told a toddler ’no’. Stark’s eyes narrow. “Yeah?” he demands. “Who’s the source?”

“A celtic woman on a mountaintop.”

That doesn’t make much sense to Steve, and judging by the frown on Stark’s face it doesn’t to him either. Before either one of them can ask for clarification, Thor looks up from his examination of the cuffs—why had he tapped them against the end of his hammer? Did he really just _lick_ them?

“These will be sufficient,” Thor announces.

From underneath Thor’s enormous hammer, Loki’s smirk finally slips. Thor, glancing down at him, gives a sharp nod. His mouth twitches up in a way that might be satisfaction, but whatever it is, he doesn’t look too happy about it. Loki sees, and he must get something from the expression that Steve can’t, because his face twists into a snarl.

“Surely, you have no serious intention of—”

“I have no wish to see you chained, least of all by my own hand,” Thor says, not unkindly, but laced with something firm as bedrock. “But I will not stand idly by while you make mischief and mayhem on innocents.”

“These mortals are hardly _innocent_ ,” Loki says. His hands clench to fists, where they’re handcuffed over his stomach, but he makes no move to struggle against the weight on his chest. Steve wonders why not, even as Loki’s sneer sweeps the room. “They sought to use the Tesseract for destruction.”

Thor meets Loki’s eyes for a long moment. He looks—tired, and almost sad. All Steve can tell from Loki’s expression is that he’s angry, angry like nobody Steve’s ever seen. He looks at least half unhinged by all that anger.

“They knew not the outcome of their actions,” Thor says, finally. He raises his brows, too pointed for anyone to misunderstand, and Loki actually flushes a little.

Thor nods, that same unhappy satisfaction. He goes on looking at Loki with sadness.

“Right. Well, if they’ll work, let’s get these on him,” Hill says, breaking the awkward silence and reaching for the manacles Thor’s still holding. “The sooner—”

Thor jerks them out of her reach, a fierce expression taking over his face as his eyes snap to her, almost a scowl of his own. Far away, from outside the building, there’s the rumble of thunder.

Hill freezes, startled enough that her calm front slips long enough to show it. _Everybody_ freezes. Steve’s fingers are tight around the handle of the shield; Stark has his hand half-raised, palm out, like he's forgotten he’s not in the armor right now.

Loki is staring at Thor like he’s never seen him before.

Another rumble of thunder. A crack of lightning.

“I will do it,” Thor says, voice tense. “No other.”

His tone leaves no room for argument. There’s challenge, too, like he’s daring her to _try_ arguing.

A moment of silence, except for the storm outside. Then Hill pulls her hand back, with the kind of slow deliberation Jacques had used pulling away from something he’d just realized was explosive and he didn’t know how to defuse.

Jacques—had there been a file on him, in Agent Coulson’s stack? Steve thinks so. He still hasn’t read them yet.

Jacques is probably dead now. Like everybody else. Like Bu—

Steve stomps hard on the wave of grief that tries to rise up, locks it away like he’s got everything else shoved behind the mental walls he never needed before he woke up in this century. He doesn’t seem to need the walls much right now, either—the other end of his soul bond is still eerily quiet—but maybe the bond is useful for something, after all. If it gives Steve a way to deal with, with how much he’s lost.

“All right,” Hill says, all cool professionalism again. She takes a step back, crosses her arms over her chest, and meets Thor’s challenging stare with one of her own. “Then get them on him, but do it now. The sooner he’s out of our hair, the sooner your alien army is dealt with.”

Thor must see her point, because he reaches for Loki, who sneers up at him. Just before their hands touch, though, Thor pauses. He leans over Loki, and meets his eyes from maybe a foot and a half away.

“You’ve left me no good choice, Loki,” he says, quietly enough to suggest nobody else was meant to hear. “Even so, I’m sorry. This pains me more than you can know.”

Loki’s mouth falls open. Hardly anything, maybe an eighth of an inch. He stares up at Thor. ”What _happened_ to you after I fell?”

Steve wants to flinch at the phrase, but he locks his muscles and holds himself stiff and still instead.

Thor, though, actually grins at Loki, just a bit. He doesn’t answer.

The manacles click as he locks them around Loki’s wrists. They both wince, at the same moment that something seems to wash out of Loki. An edge; an extra brilliance. Steve doesn’t know what it is, what to call it, but the man lying on the gurney is abruptly—Less.

“Yes,” Thor says, a little stilted. He straightens and steps back, though his gaze doesn’t leave Loki’s. “These will be sufficient.”

Loki does some odd combination of a scoff and a sneer. His eyebrows go up impressively high. “Then, perhaps—Mjolnir?”

Thor’s eyes finally leave Loki as he ducks his head, like he’s suddenly bashful. Steve isn’t sure what half of that was about, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen brothers act like that to each other. He doesn’t think he’s seen anyone act like that. Half rage, half guilty disappointment, all intensity.

“Ah, yes of course,” Thor says, lifting his hand, and the hammer flies up off Loki’s chest and smacks against his palm.

If Loki looks faintly surprised, he still sneers while he says, “Thank you.”

“Great, glad that’s taken care of,” Stark calls, giving his hands a loud clap and rubbing them together. Steve’s getting the impression that this guy _lives_ to cut tension by sticking himself in where he shouldn’t be. “Let’s get the rest of this show on the road, what do you say?”

Thor’s jaw firms. “Very well.” He nods at Agent Hill, who grabs the gurney and starts wheeling him away.

Thunder still rumbles from outside, but Thor lets her go, and Loki doesn’t immediately try to get loose.

#

They take the portal device to the southwestern US, and have Dr. Selvig set it back up in the middle of the desert. Fury sends along a half a dozen tactical teams, and also what looks like half the army.

“Ready?” Steve asks, before they activate the portal device. It’s the last chance to back out; none of them take it.

“Call it, Cap,” Stark says, only a hint of humor layered over a mountain of iron. “Run this thing one more time for us, will you?”

Steve looks around, finds everyone—including all the agents, and the commanders for the army units they brought in—looking at him expectantly. A weight settles on his shoulders, pressing them down and back, forcing them square. Steve stands up straight, and takes a deep breath.

“Banner, you’re on the ground with the Army and SHIELD. Anything gets by the rest of us, or things go south, you need to be prepared to help contain this.” Which means shutting down the portal before they obtain mission objectives, if necessary, and they all know it.

Banner nods. There’s no green tinting his face, and he looks as collected as ever, but then, Steve’s never seen him actually transform into the Other Guy. He doesn’t really know what the signs are, how soon they appear.

“Stark, Thor, you’re in the sky,” Steve says, turning to them. “This comes down to you—Stark, you need to get the through that portal and deliver your payload.”

“Roger, Rogers,” Stark says, with a giggle at himself. Steve ignores this; the man volunteered to fly a bomb, easily as powerful as any Steve’d buried in the arctic with himself, through an inter-dimensional rift and into an alien warship. Steve can damn well afford to cut him some slack, if he wants to crack a few jokes.

“Thor, help Stark get through, then keep these guys busy until he can get back out.”

“As you say, Captain,” Thor booms, setting his hammer to spin around his fist. There are already thunderclouds gathering above them.

“Barton, Romanov, with me in the jet. We’ll take out as many as we can, pick off any stragglers who sneak past Thor.”

“The rest of you—” Steve looks past his team, at the agents and officers watching, the kind of awed, trusting looks he’d never got used to on all their faces. “Do what you can. You’re our best hope, if things go wrong.”

There are a lot of nods, several salutes, and a resounding, “Yes, sir, Captain.”

Steve takes another deep breath, lets it out slow. He tells himself he doesn’t notice the empty space just past his left shoulder, where someone should be standing.

They’d given Steve a long-range rifle for this. It looked hardly anything like the one that used to save his life on all those missions, a couple months ago—seventy years ago—but still, Steve’d had to fight back a broken noise. He was never a sniper; that wasn’t _his_ job.

This, well, this apparently _is_.

“Do it.”

At Steve’s nod, Banner uses Stark’s device to jump start Dr. Selvig’s. A beam of bright, pure blue—too clear to be natural—shoots from the device into the air. A hole appears, way up in the sky, edged in glowing blue and looking into inky blackness.

A portal into another dimension. Of all the things Steve never thought to see outside a science-fiction film.

Oh, man, the _look_ Bucky’d be giving him right now.

Steve checks that the shield is properly secured to his back, hefts the rifle he wishes was being carried by someone else, and heads for the quinjet with Romanov and Barton.

#

The battle isn’t a long one.

#

The explosion’s still unfolding in front of him as Tony lets himself drop back through the portal. Starbursts of fire and destruction, spreading out from the initial impact site; a better chain reaction than they could’ve hoped for.

“It’s over, they’re all going down,” Cap’s voice calls across the comms, relief and pride and something else giving it more animation than Tony’s ever heard from him. “We did it.”

As victories go, it’s kind of anti-climactic. Not even the teenage soul mate who wants nothing to do with Tony would’ve found it impressive, probably.

Not that Tony did any of this because of his soul bond, but—he’s just saying. A little appreciation would be nice. To much to wish for, apparently.

“Well done, Stark,” Cap adds.

Or maybe it’s not. Tony grins, and turns to control his descent, zipping past the quinjet. Time to pretend to try talking himself out of clean-up.

“Banner, lock it down.”

The portal closes behind Tony without a fuss.

#

They get Loki sent off back to Asgard in the care of Thor. It’s more of a relief than it probably should be.

Oh, not to see the back of Loki, that makes plenty of sense—but to see the back of Thor, too, a man Steve likes well enough? That shouldn’t be the relief it is. He kind of feels bad about it.

The thing is, Steve’s starting to get a headache, trying to figure out the way Thor keeps alternating between staring like a starving man when Loki isn’t looking, and pretending to ignore him when Loki _is_. Because, see, Steve can’t figure out why he’d _bother_ —it’s pretty clear Loki hates Thor’s guts, his face, and the storm cloud he rode in on, too. A fella shouldn’t look at somebody who feels that way about him like watching ’em is more important than breathing.

Steve used to stare at somebody like that. And Bucky’d actually liked _him_ , yet still look where it’d got them. One dead, and the other halfway to wishing he was. No way for something like that to end well.

Still, it was Thor’s mess if he wanted it, which apparently he did, because he packed them both back off the planet happily enough. Then there was nothing left but a ringing silence, an intricate Norse knot imprinted on the ground, and the world they’d saved from aliens going on around them without noticing.

_Looks like you won the war_ , Steve imagines he can hear that voice from the past saying, warm with amusement, steady with pride. All of it wrapped up with the bone-deep surety that Steve could’ve done nothing less.

And he couldn’t have, could he? Not when he was living up to the expectations of a ghost, and ghosts don’t listen to excuses. Not that Steve would’ve tried ‘em.

Even dead, Bucky’s still the best man Steve knows, and Steve’s still willing to do anything for him. He squares his shoulders.

There’s one more thing Steve oughta do, if he’s really gonna keep trying to be the man Bucky knew. It’s not going AWOL and parachuting behind enemy lines for an unauthorized one-man rescue mission, but it still feels pretty damn treacherous.

It needs to be done, just the same.

“Hey, Stark,” Steve calls, approaching Stark before he and Banner can drive off. Banner looks at Steve with curiosity, and Stark with wariness. Steve hides a wince, and soldiers on, “No hard feelings, yeah?”

Steve holds out his hand, and Stark looks at it for a heavy moment.

“Yeah,” he finally says, “sure.” He reaches out to accept the handshake.

Something brilliant blooms across Steve’s brain, smashing through all the mental walls he’d taken such care to build. A sense of _rightness_ sweeps over everything, burning bright and shiny and _so fucking smart_ behind his eyelids. Steve’s never felt anything like it in his life. Not even his time in the vita-ray chamber during Project Rebirth—that had been bright, yes, but an agonizing brightness, and sharp pain, stretching him like taffy until he’d been sure he’d snap apart.

This isn’t like that, not at all. It’s like a shockwave of light, warmth washing over him. A moment and an infinity later, it ebbs back out, leaving darkness in its wake.

_Oh_ , Steve thinks, as his legs go out from under him.

_Tony_.


End file.
